This. Oh, so very much this.

I think that the best thing is to buy a game when you want to play it, regardless of a sale, but to save money the best thing is to buy several games you plan to play at a sale and then not buy anything until the next big sale. The people who have huge backlogs are those who follow the sales, who see all these games in front of them and get tempted to buy them. Such people also spend a lot of time being involved with the sales, possibly on a daily basis. If you don't follow the sales you might end up buying games for more, but at least you will be dedicating the time to gaming, not shopping.

Be patient and wait until New Year's Eve. But when you see a game you want that is 80% off or cheaper, then go for it because there might not be such a good deal again later down the road. 80% off or cheaper = a rare deal. Such a deal is like almost getting the game for free.

Just wait for the sales, It's not like the games are going to fly off and never come back lol Learn how to save my friend and you will get more for your money over time ;)

I think that's bad advice, unless this falls under the "game you're planning to play soon". It's a slippery slope. I think it's fine if you buy several such games at the year end sale and just play the bunch later, but if you follow sales year round, you soon end up with "this game is 80% off and sounds rather interesting; probably won't play it any time soon, but it's a good addition to my collection". Then you start buying bundles left and right because a game in them caught your eye and it was all "such good value", and soon enough you have a huge backlog.

Edit: I see you edited the message. If you're talking about the Steam sale, then yes, it's good advice to buy stuff only at daily or 12 hour deals and wait for the rest until the end.

I meant, he should be patient and wait until New Year's Eve because there will probably be a lot of good deals then. They want to milk the people who already spend lots of money and don't want to spend anymore. And the only way to do that is with awesome deals. But because 80% off or cheaper deals are rare, he should go for it, if he sees one now. I'm not telling him to buy cheap bundles, all year around. The OP also seems to be someone with a limited amount of money for games so I assumed for him, it's all about good deals.

I'd wait if you can. Sometimes sales on games a gamer wants makes it so hard to wait though... I'm hoping sites do a really nice sale on New Year's Eve/day. New Years Eve would be a perfect time to do an Insomnia sale imo. Will be up celebrating & watching the ball drop anyway. (watching the ball drop always sounds so wrong to me lol) Humble Bundle & Green Man Gaming are both good sites to find deals. Someone posted about Enhanced Steam add on for Firefox & that is really useful imo.

Thanks peeps. All good information here. Luckily being 34 and having real responsibilities helps my impulse buying out. That said, being new to this 80% off a game thing is still crazy to me as that was not the case when I used to PC game.

The special sales are no longer special anymore. There's a sale everyday. If you see a game bundled or discounted at 75% (or more) buy it if you want it because although it might get discounted more we're talking about pennies (unless it's an overpriced AAA game).