Refunds came about because of EU laws. Those flash sales would have resulted in a bunch of refunds so they stopped doing them at the same time. They actively encouraged (and still do) people to refund & rebuy for cheaper at any time whether any steam sale is involved or not as long as within the refund terms.
Personally, I only miss the mini games they had during those sales but I hated the flash sales themselves. Had to waste time researching when the games wanted were going to be the cheapest during the flash sale. Then had to hope it was during some free point of the day, notification/alarm worked, or that didn’t forget to create the notification/alarm. Then had to hope the store wasn’t overloaded because everyone else was also trying to get in on time limited sales.
The OS was also very limited with focus on Linux ports of games which there were not very many at the time. Proton wasn’t a thing yet. I bought two of them, one for myself and one for my brother. I tested it out & it was neat but wiped both to do clean installs of Windows 7 so could play the games we wanted.
Would love a new Steam Machine and could actually be good this time. Proton didn’t exist when they released the original Steam Machines which limited you to linux ports of games. I had bought two but wiped & did clean installs of Windows 7 so we could play all the games wanted to.
Before Proton, gaming on linux relied on native ports or WINE. Native ports were rare & not always better. WINE took some learning to make work well but I dunno, never got any good at it.
Costly rule (lemm.ee)
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SteamOS will be coming to other handhelds before you can install it on your PC 'because right now, it's very, very tuned for Steam Deck' | PC Gamer (www.pcgamer.com)