SALEPOCALYPSE Is Upon Us!
Good news is that, according to the chicken entrails, the harvests will be adequate this season. Bad news is that Jupiter is in the fifth house, so no Half Life: Episode Three for the near future.
Over the weekend, I went on down to the local ancient Roman-style augury to get an update about when Steam’s going to hold its big summer sale (i.e. the Steam SUMMER SALEPOCALYPSE). According to the chicken entrails and internet scuttlebutt, it should be hitting sometime this week. To prepare for the imminent arrival of Great Savings, I have found two applications and a website that should help you, the reader, both prepare for and feel immediately bad about any upcoming spending sprees.
1. TikiOne Steam Cleaner - http://steamcleaner.tikione.fr/en/
Whenever you download and install a game in Steam, Steam will usually download additional installers–like DirectX and PhysX–to finish the installation. If you already have these programs/interfaces/shiny-digital-technology things installed, however, Steam will still download the installers; they will just sit uselessly in your Steam directory. This program will go through your files and clear out any and all of these duplicates that you might have. I ran this program a few days ago and had just over 2 gigs of redundant DirectX/PhysX installers lying around in my Steam files.
2. SteamTool - http://www.stefanjones.ca/steam/
If you are not able to clear out enough space with the Steam Cleaner to install all your new games, you can (theoretically) put them on a different drive. The problem is that Steam does not really handle moving individual games or the whole directory to a new location that well. This SteamTool streamlines that whole process, allowing you to move the game files to a new location, like an external hard drive, and still be able access the games from inside Steam and keep them updated/synced up. I have also used this to move some of the bulkier titles (seriously, Napoleon: Total War takes up 15 gigs?) off the C drive and on to a less burdened external hard drive.
3. Steam Calculator – http://www.steamcalculator.com/
Once you have survived the SUMMER SALEPOCALYPSE, you might want some kind of metric . The standard go-to here is the Steam Calculator website, which looks at your Steam profile and gives you an estimate of your collection’s market value. That being said, some of their price estimates can be pretty off. For example, the website lists each volume of the Telltale Sam and Max games as being $29.99 each when that is the cost of a whole season of five games. I would look at Steam Calculator as less of a totally accurate summary of how much you have spent, but more an estimate of what your games would be worth in a world without digital distribution or SALEPOCALYPSES.
Hopefully these programs and websites will improve your Steam experience, or at least mildly amuse/depress you. Also, get to your SALEPOCALYPSE bunker now. Hope you bought canned foods.
About the Author
rowsdower "So, Rowsdower, is that a stupid name, or..." Vaguely serious thoughts about entertainment products for children.
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