Welcome to the second last Whining Wednesday of this year. Luckily, there’s still a day left until Christmas, so I don’t have to hold back and can just complain freely. Because besides Santa Claus, “Last Christmas” (which you all now have in your ears) and the disappointment of the missing snowfall, something else is coming our way: The Steam Winter Sale. That’s actually pretty great!
If you want to continue thinking that, and can’t make sense of a little feminist, leftist, well-meaning criticism, you should rather quickly click away from here.
If you get paid for watching advertisements
To get straight to the point: Overall, I have nothing against the Steam sales. Some deals are really nice, and if you want to complete your game collection relatively cheaply, you will definitely find numerous options there. So far, there has always been a kind of mini-game corresponding to each “event” where you could earn “Steam Trading Cards”. Those are nothing more than real money, as you can directly sell them on the Steam Marketplace for some cents (which has already financed some of my games).
This time again, you can grab some cards, but not through a game or a vote, but much more clumsily: by watching ads. You have to click through your “personal queue”, which is a series of games that Steam thinks you might find interesting. Because anyone who likes demanding Visual Novels like “Hate Plus” will surely also like “Sakura Santa” and “Hatoful Boyfriend” … or not?
This method always reminds me of a (quite old) contribution from the cabaret artist Volker Pispers. He had a similar idea back then, suggesting that unemployed people could be forced to watch ads from private broadcasters so that they could earn money…
Of course, the comparison is a bit far-fetched, I know that myself. But it’s not too far from Pispers’ thought.
Sure, now everyone could say “Oh, Cortyn. Just don’t click on it and leave it out.” Of course that’s true. But what should I complain about today then? But enough about me: I wish you happy holidays, may you be richly gifted, and complain again only when the relatives have left.
