So, with the Steam sale come and gone, I thought I might go over my poor, poor purchases, both that I made myself, and got friends to make for me.  
 
I'll start with what I got myself (title, and price)
 

1. Fable 1, 2.50$
2. Cargo,  5.00$
3. Lego Batman, 5:00$
4. Sonic Generations, 15.00$ (from Amazon/CAG)
5. Renegade Ops, 3.00$ (from Amazon/CAG)
6. E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy, 2.50$
7. Rainbow Six Vegas, 2.50$
8. Railworks Train Simulator 2012 Deluxe, 4.00$
9. Rock of Ages, 2.50$
10. Sequence, 1.24$
11. Puzzle Agent 2, Quake 4, Magic 2012 expansion, Xotic, Fallout New Vegas: Lonesome Road DLC, Deck Pack 1, Duels 2012 Deck Pack 2 -- total was 18.63$
12. L.A. Noire, Rochard -- total was 17.48$
13. Spore Complete Pack (Spore, Galactic Adventures, Creepy & Cute), and Darkspore -- total was 44.97$
14. Shogun 2, 2.50 (actually was 7.50 on Amazon, but I used a 5$ off coupon on it)
15. Crazy Machines Complete Bundle, 20$

So, with the Steam sale come and gone, I thought I might go over my poor, poor purchases, both that I made myself, and got friends to make for me.  
 
I'll start with what I got myself (title, and price)
 

1. Fable 1, 2.50$
2. Cargo,  5.00$
3. Lego Batman, 5:00$
4. Sonic Generations, 15.00$ (from Amazon/CAG)
5. Renegade Ops, 3.00$ (from Amazon/CAG)
6. E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy, 2.50$
7. Rainbow Six Vegas, 2.50$
8. Railworks Train Simulator 2012 Deluxe, 4.00$
9. Rock of Ages, 2.50$
10. Sequence, 1.24$
11. Puzzle Agent 2, Quake 4, Magic 2012 expansion, Xotic, Fallout New Vegas: Lonesome Road DLC, Deck Pack 1, Duels 2012 Deck Pack 2 -- total was 18.63$
12. L.A. Noire, Rochard -- total was 17.48$
13. Spore Complete Pack (Spore, Galactic Adventures, Creepy & Cute), and Darkspore -- total was 44.97$
14. Shogun 2, 2.50 (actually was 7.50 on Amazon, but I used a 5$ off coupon on it)
15. Crazy Machines Complete Bundle, 20$

And to think I may have influenced some of these purchases...

Brings a tear to my eye.

Steam is evil. You probably wont even put 2 hours into about a third of those games unless you stop playing new games until July.

Wait a few years and you'll buy less during these sales. I spent some good coin during my first Steam sale, but this year I spent less than $15 overall. All I bought was Blur and the Dungeons of Dredmor DLC for myself and Borderlands: GOTY Edition for my brother. But in return, he bought me Dead Island and gave me a copy of The Ship. I almost bought L.A. Noire, but Rockstar's PC port track record is pretty shit.

I felt like I bought a lot more than $160 on this past sale, but going over it, I probably spent less than half of that. Makes me feel that much better about all the games I got specifically for achievements.

ARRGH! I thought this was over...*buys Space Marine*

So wait... now we're complaining about how many games we were able to buy for very little cash?

This is like those threads on the Steam forums complaining about how a game is $4 when it was $2.50 during the summer sale. Or those ones complaining about only receiving coal for an achievement done in a free to play game.

Oh, Internet, You!

Now you have a huge backlog to play until the next sale :)

I had that situation where I have everything on Steam that I actually want, so I probably only spent like $40 on games that fall into the "Too-cheap-to-not-buy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" category.

Hey I'm a silly person that currently has expendable cash to spend, I might as well enjoy it while this arrangement lasts right? So fuck it.

The Steam Christmas deals I found were a bit meh overall this year, like many of them were recycled over from Summer Camp or could already be obtained cheaply on another platform. I will say the deals for Sonic Generations and L.A. Noire Complete were impressive, despite being slightly higher than my £5 budget but many of my impulse buys were sort of influenced through other means.

Which brings me to the Great Gift Pile. Damn, what was I thinking buying games just to complete the tasks? I already told you this, but I got Psychonauts, Wings of Prey and Hard Reset partly because of the tasks, only never finding the enthusiasm to complete them bar with Hard Reset. Heck, atleast I won R.U.S.E through it in the end. Part of me wonders if it was worth it though.

But eh, I still got the Jedi Knight Collection, Street Fighter IV and Fable - The Lost Chapters out of christmas deals so I have little reason to cry about what I got in the end.

@PyjamaRama: Same here, lol

I bought dungeon defenders just before xmas and the humble indie bundle. Good to know I don't suffer Vinny syndrome.

@Dalai said:

Wait a few years and you'll buy less during these sales. I spent some good coin during my first Steam sale, but this year I spent less than $15 overall...

This is true overall I've found. For me it was a bit different. I splurged during my first Steam sale and then the following holiday, I didn't by anything because there weren't any titles that really moved me to buy at that time. Those that did were either still too expensive for how much I expected to play them or I preferred a console release. This past Christmas however, I did spend around $60 on 5 games including Skyrim. I had intended to spend no more than half that, but sometimes I see something that's too good to refuse. I'll debate later whether or not it was a good idea to pass on Deus Ex Human Revolution for $17. The upside is there's always next year's sale to look forward to.

i have a huge backlog and am fairly sure anything i might want to add to my backlog will go on sale again before i'd get to it anyway, so i almost didn't buy anything. especially since i managed to score 4 games i wanted absolutely free through doing specific things in games i already had.

but then on the last day i bought a little over $11 worth of dlc for deus ex human revolution, magicka, and dungeon defenders because i saw that one of my friends had bought some dlc. at least it was 66% - 75% off.