My rule is I can't buy a game unless I am going to play it that same day.
Even in cases where the rule causes me to miss a sale and end up buying the game later, I'm sure it still saves me money, and - more importantly - saves a tremendous amount of regret and stress caused by buying games that would just sit my library unplayed.
I've got like... 3 games I'll get at the moment, one's not even going to be on pc for like 6 months, another isn't out to next month and the other just came out so probably won't be on sale :l
I've been making a huge dent in my library since last year. I've fully completed over half of my 200+ library. I shouldn't, but will probably get some new games to add to the decreasing backlog so that I can have more backlog to play! :P
Consumers have associated the experience as a sale, but the last few steam sales I have only found very very niche stuff actually on sale, everything else isn't really on sale it just has meaningless percents next to them.
Edit wow so I am really not in the majority here with my opinion haha, ok, maybe I am seeing this wrong? Honestly, the last couple steam sales I have compared the sales going on to previous sales <1 month previous or less away and the sales just didn't look that good from that perspective.
I am not saying games aren't going on sale in the Steam sale, I am arguing the sales are mediocre compared to random sales throughout the year, but again... I probably just have a warped vision of this because clearly people think otherwise.
As in, there aren't discounts? I only ever look st my wishlist during steam sales and I see plenty of discounts and I dont see the msrp having been raised or anything