I think that anyone who is even slightly interested in games has heard about a service like Steam from the well-known company Valve. First of all, it is the largest electronic platform for the sale of games, where you can find almost anything. Including even something that has not yet entered the official sale and is in beta testing. And secondly, it is an online gaming platform and a huge community of players. For any game there is a bunch of reviews and reviews, instructions compiled by players for solving technical problems, tips for passing, and sometimes amateur additions and modifications. It has its own recommendation service, a curator system, a tag cloud, friend recommendations, and so on. The social component is also unforgotten – lists of friends, chats, achievements, collectible cards and other similar things.
One of the signature features of Steam is the traditional sales that take place several times a year. These days, players have the opportunity to purchase games with huge discounts that go up to 75%. Moreover, we are talking not only and not so much about the ugly creations of unknown developers, which no one needs for nothing, but about the popular games of large studios.
An example is the current Summer Sale, which started on June 23rd and will run until July 4th, where even the just-released Doom can be bought for half the price. Although usually discounts on new items are still set less, for example, on the purchase of Dark Souls 3 or Tom Clancy's The Division, you will be able to save only 25%, and Master of Orion (the game in 'early access') is sold at a 30% discount.
The main charm of such sales is not discounts on the hottest novelties, but the opportunity to buy cheap games of recent years, which have simply not yet been reached. And even though the most inveterate gamblers have already tried them several times, the bulk of players spend much less time on games and can easily find a lot of interesting things for themselves even in 'last year's collection'.
The problem is that not all discounts remain the same for the entire duration of the sale. New games may appear in the list of discounts every day, and discounts for old positions may gradually decrease. This is where the idea comes to mind to install the official Steam client on a smartphone in order to follow the sale with one eye even on weekends, which usually take place away from the computer.
The app can be easily found and installed via Google Play. At the first start, you will need to enter your Steam username and password, and then write a verification code that will come to your mail.
In terms of functionality, the mobile client is practically no different from its 'desktop' counterpart, although of course you won't be able to play purchased games on a smartphone. You can follow the sale or just look for interesting games here without any problems, because filters, tags, comments and all other tedious things in this matter have remained in place.
It should also be convenient to correspond with friends, although I have not personally checked this moment. But with the 'Community Hubs' that Steam has for every game, things are not entirely smooth. Nobody thought to adapt the layout for mobile devices here, which at best leads to the appearance of horizontal scrolling, and at worst – to the inability to read part of the text (for example, part of a table may not fit on the screen). And this is really a shame, because there is a lot of interesting and useful information about games on Steam.
This is why the Steam mobile client is unlikely to linger on my smartphone after the sale is over. It's sometimes really interesting to watch the latest news about your favorite game or read new tips on passing tactics, but it's very inconvenient here it's implemented. But that is another story.
How do you like the current Summer Sale? What games would you recommend paying attention to, what else would you like to see on the list?