Yup, the annual Steam Holiday Sale has started. Over the coming week-ish you can expect amazing deals and an empty wallet.

BUT NOW THERE'S A CATCH.

Much like the Summer Camp event, you can complete achievements in games (and a few on Steam itself) to win objectives.

Objectives win you coal or a gift. A gift is either a coupon or a full game, while coal is an entry in their giveaway.

1000 people get the Valve Complete Pack (Portal 2 included!)
100 winners get the top 5 games on their wishlist
50 winners get the top 10 games on their wishlist
1 person gets EVERY GAME ON STEAM.

EVERY. GAME. ON. STEAM.

Or, if you aren't feeling lucky, you can craft seven pieces of coal together to get another gift/ chance at a full game.

http://store.steampowered.com/holidaysale/details

I suggest you take part in today's objective if nothing else. There's the first freebie mission up, where all you need to do is check your inventory for two free gifts. I got 50% of coupons for any Valve game and Killing Floor.

Too bad it's lying to me. So far I've been given nothing--no gifts, no coal, and the Steam inventory is saying I lost all my stuff for Team Fortress 2 to boot.

I know this is over, but I have a few comments:

1. Your inventory is not visible to you unless you are logged into Steam on your browser. Not the Steam forums, but the Steam store itself. Or see point 2 below.

2. Whether your inventory is visible to others (or to you when you're not logged in) can be changed in settings after you log in.

3. The Steam forums were barely able (if at all able) to handle the influx of new people. The Steam Trading forum in particular was just overrun with at least fifty or so posts a minute, all to different threads. Combined with the "no bumping" rule (which was rarely enforced because it just wasn't practical), this just meant that there was practically no action for you unless:
* You had games people really wanted. By this I mean games like DOTA 2, Skyrim, Terraria, or pretty much anything that was on the Great Gift Pile achievements list (such as Audiosurf, Nuclear Dawn, etc.).
* You had a crapton of coal (on the order of at least 100). This indicated that you were either wealthy enough to somehow acquire that much coal through other trades, or you were a coal farmer.
* You were willing to buy people games with your own money, in order to get coal.

I didn't win anything, lol. As the Heavy would put it, not big surprise.

I managed to get all of Fallout: New Vegas and its DLCs for under 20 bucks two months before the Ultimate version would've come out. Also someone gave me a 75% off coupon for Borderlands GOTY. I'm pleased.