Sneaky sneaky: D2D sales list crystal ball
Direct2Drive UK have got a promotion on where they have a game on special offer for each day of advent. Each game is only available for 24 hours.
Through some clever internet hackery, the full list of planned discounted games has been discovered (although not the order that they will be presented in).
Here’s the list:
Battlefield 2 Collection
Bioshock
Champions Online
Crysis Warhead
Dragon Age: Origins Digital Deluxe Edition
Machinarium
Majesty 2
Mass Effect
Medieval II: Total War
Prototype
Resident Evil 5
Rise of Flight
Rome: Total War Gold Edition
Section 8
Sonic Mega Collection
Stormrise
Street Fighter IV (50% off, today)
Torchlight
Trine (50% off, was on the 1st)
Virtua Tennis 2009
Wolfenstein
Looks like they might all be 50% off too. This list is just a useful guide, and might not be 100% accurate. I will keep an eye on proceedings.
Thanks to Ryan for the tip off.
If the sneakery was pulling the [1-9999].jpg banners out of the holiday directory, where the resulting number then mapped to the game’s product ID (worked for the US site), you need to keep checking back on them (and shift-reloading them, since they cache). The US one has updated with new xx% off stickers on some of those banners since they were first uploaded.
Also, the game shown in the guess-the-game ornament displayed each day has so far mapped to which game came up for sale the next day (as in once: SFIV was the UK ornament yesterday), so Majesty 2 should be tomorrow’s game. Though how this can continue is hard to guess — the set of ornaments on the UK site only included the US games last I looked…
Oh and the list of games with sales banners for the D2D US sale is (ordered assuming they’ll just go in the same order as the ornaments.jpg, though maybe which ones have received stickers first is a better clue):
Mirror’s Edge — first bargain, still on, 50% off @ $5
The Witcher — 50% off @ $20
NFS: Shift — 50% off @ $25
Command and Conquer Red Alert 3 Bundle
Wolfenstein — available some places outside the US
Majesty 2 — available some places outside the US — 75% off @ $10
The Lord of the Rings Conquest
Mercenaries 2
Street Fighter IV — available some places outside the US — 50% off @ $20
Battlefield 2 Complete — 50% off @ $15
Dragon Age
The Sims 3 — $10 off @ $40
Risen
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08
NFS ProStreet
ArmA II
Resident Evil 5 — available some places outside the US
Rise of Flight — available worldwide
Section 8
Civ IV — available in the UK
Torchlight — available worldwide — 50% off @ $10
Machinarium — available worldwide — 50% off @ $10
Champions Online — available worldwide
Spore
Wait, aren’t you missing 3 games? Ah, you don’t list Civilization 4, even though the banner’s there ( http://www.direct2drive.co.uk/Sites/RET-EN-GB/_img/holiday/309.jpg ). You need to check 1-999.jpg, not 0001-0999.jpg if that might be the cause of the missing games.
Rise of Flight would be lovely. Can’t say I really fancy any of the others right now, which is probably a good thing.
Meh … nothing there that i want which i haven’t got …
A new “Guess tomorrow’s game for a chance to win” graphic has appeared underneath the bauble today, so tomorrow will be Bioshock – although yesterday’s bauble was Red Alert 3 and today’s on sale game is The Witcher, so not sure if it’ll always be the case.
When they first uploaded the ornaments.jpg image to the UK site, they just used the same file as the US’s site (which has Red Alert 3 in 4th position). They updated it on the 2nd or so with the UK deals (with The Witcher in 4th position), but you probably still had a cached copy of the old one in your browser. If you now see Bioshock, you have the updated image, and it should show the proper upcoming deals.
You might have gotten a guess or two wrong if you were entering the contest. But according to the rules, you aren’t eligible to enter the UK contest unless you’re American anyway o_O.
In fact, you can see all the bauble graphics in one file:
http://www.direct2drive.co.uk/Sites/RET-EN-GB/_img/holiday/ornaments.jpg
If this is right, then there’s no Rise of Flight and the order is (NB. I am rubbish at this type of guessing, so have put question marks on the ones I’m not sure of):
1st Trine
2nd Street Fighter IV
3rd Majesty 2
4th The Witcher
5th Bioshock
6th Resident Evil 5
7th Torchlight
8th Section 8
9th Machinarium
10th Champions Online
11th Rome: Total War Gold Edition
12th GRID?
13th The Sims 2/3?
14th Medieval II: Total War
15th Stormrise
16th Virtua Tennis 2009
17th Sonic Mega Collection
18th Battlefield 2?
19th Crysis Warhead?
20th Mass Effect
21st Wolfenstein?
22nd Civilization IV
23rd Prototype
24th Dragon Age: Origins Digital Deluxe Edition
That one on the 21st is ArmA II – at 75% off, making it £7.50.
(http://www.direct2drive.co.uk/Sites/RET-EN-GB/_img/holiday/8195.jpg)
12th is from NFS: Pro Street, but there’s no “holiday” graphic, so who knows what’s goign on with this.
The US site changed up the banners a bit the other day. They dropped the Civ 4 and Wolfenstein banners, and added Civ 4 Complete Edition and Prototype banners in their places. They even updated the ornaments image to replace the Wolfenstein skull with the Prototype hoody. They’ve also added a Bioshock banner and there’s still 4 or 5 games that haven’t gotten markdown stickers applied to their banners yet, so it looks like there might be more changes coming.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the UK deals were shuffling around too, as they finalize them. It’s possible that NFS ProStreet is an example of a tentative deal which has now been replaced — the ornament is a few days away from popping up, so they probably don’t feel rushed to fix it. Does anyone know if there used to be a NFS ProStreet banner up? Having a list of which banners do/did exist on the US site has made it quite easy to track what is happening, even without the ornament image updating. The ornaments being updated are necessary to guess the order, though.
I see that the UK site also has added a banner for Civ 4 complete (60% off), though they don’t seem to have deleted the old Civ 4 banner yet.
You can get the Battlefield 2 Collection from the EA Store for £3.75
Add to basket from http://eastore.ea.com/store/eaemea/home/
Use the code ‘VoucherCodes.com25%’
Bingo 🙂