Good thing that my CC hasn't topped up yet. My bank is awfully slow... You get what you pay for I guess (and they pay me basically to use them since it's a cashback card).

If you're seriously trying to curb your buying, then stay the course. A month with firm resolve will soon turn into two. Then three. You can do it, Billy!

If [anything] lands on Bundlestars, chances are it's going reappear again in a future bundle, especially if it's a mediocre game (50% positive reviews have got to mean something) such as the RoA remake. So I wouldn't worry about it being a zomgonceinalifetime deal.
Awesome offers happen all the time, but realistically it's hard to find the time to play everything, and if you don't get to enjoy what you bought, then it's not really a deal, isn't it.

While I still fall prey of impulse buying every once in a while, for the most part I've stopped buying anything that I don't want to play right now (which means today or, if it's a big download, a day or two). Now I'm playing and enjoying Endless Space which I got yesterday, it's fun and it's not giving me a chance to check what deals I'm missing. :D

Come August 7th it will officially be 2 months since I last bought myself a game..... assuming I don't cave in before that.

Kudos on the self-restraint. :D

Thanks foxy =)

Btw any news on the Bizarre Bonza Bazaar Ba-whatever giveaway series? :p

I believe it is slowly gaining traction. I imagine we should have something. Soon™ ;-)

Yes, I have a tendency to focus on faults - this isn't so much due to "everything in the world sucks" pessimism but for practical purposes. When I review a game , I don't add up all the good points for a final score, instead I start with a perfect 5 stars rating (or 10 points or 100/100 or whatever) and then -subtract- points for flaws. When there are good points that effectively balance out a flaw, the ratings goes up again unless the flaw is unredeemable.

Btw, it's similar when I draw or paint something, it would be completely inefficient to acknowledge all the stuff I did right while being in the process of creating a picture. It's much more viable to just focus on the most notable mistakes and fix those. If you've already put down 300 brush strokes, it's more sensible to "debug" the 3 rogue brush strokes that stand out most as being not only wrong but wrong in a bothersome way. Once you fixed those, you can address the next 3 most bothersome ones etc until you reach a point where the whole picture looks right to you. This is of particular importance once you don't want to add more detail. At a certain point, one starts to edit and subtract/unify rather than to add new stuff because simply adding new stuff does not improve a painting after a certain point. It's like coding where you try to trim down your code and keep it lean and clean. Technically, virtually every mark and brush stroke is a mistake, sometimes euphemistically called "happy accidents" when they happen spontaneously and don't bother the creator.
I don't think it's even possible to draw or paint anything remotely cohesive without focusing on what needs to be fixed, focusing on the good points would lead nowhere at all. Very similar to software debugging except that a painting can keep a few bugs and it's no biggie and some happy accidents even add charm and a personal touch.

Don't feel too bad about it, this only resets your clean timer but not your total efforts. Perhaps you improved overall if you calculate the total number of relapses per day this year and compare them to last year, at least that's what I noticed when it came to comparing last year to this year as explained here

As I pointed out above, I don't think a relapse after such a long abstinence is all too tragic as long as the total number of new relapses is decreasing compared to the total number of old relapses. You can't beat yourself up over it but if you felt that those new purchases were "uncontrolled" ones then you're obviously not healed yet. The positive thing is that you're aware of it, otherwise you wouldn't have posted in this thread so you're probably on the right track.

It's easy not to buy anything when the sales don't appeal to you, the true test comes when you see a sale that does tempt you. That's why I still check GOG and Steam for sales because rather than hiding from the problem, I want to face it High Noon style - and not draw my Colt! It's a duel you can't win if you pull the trigger because if you do, the bullet comes out of the other person's gun instead of your own and then it flies into you and when you buy a lot of games it turns you into Swiss cheese. The summer sale turned me into Swiss cheese a little bit but now the cheese holes are closing up and I've been clean for over a month, feels good.

I have Hearts of Iron 3 but I never play it because it takes up too much energy and time. It's a great strategy game and all but if you want to relax with games, this one is way too high maintenance. Needs a lot of time and stamina so you might want to ask yourself, are you really willing to invest so much time and energy into one game that takes hours and hours to learn? Don't you have other less hardcore strategy games in your backlog that you're procrastinating on, does it really make sense to add another one that you're going to be even less likely to actually enjoy? Just a couple things to consider in order to find out what you really want. If I had asked myself this stuff and answered honesty, I wouldn't have bought the game last year when it was on a steep sale as well.
Suggestion: Pick the most in-depth strategy game you currently own and give that one a spin, and by the time you remember that you wanted to buy Hearts of Iron 3 the sale will be over.

Groot goes to step 1: denial! A happy person in the therapy room? that's unheard of, almost suspicious - I'm getting an Emperor Palpatine "come to the dark side" vibe from your post :) Then again, if you say you're happy then no one has the right to judge you in any way. If you're really happy then everything is fine, no problem whatsoever. In case you suddenly feel the happiness evaporates and turns into a Skywalker "noooo, it's impossible! - search you're feelings you know it to be true" moment, you can always come here to get support though.

Saved by external factors is good, next step is saving yourself when those factors are absent. Not saying you should change your bank just to make your therapy more realistic though :)

Soon as in GoG soon?

I bought DuckTales for $6 at GamersGate (Steam key) after verifying with with 5 year old that he's going to play the game. He played a little (with my help). We'll see if we continue playing/

By the way, it was on sale recently for $1 on Google Play, except the sale was for "select regions", otherwise I would have bought it.

In this case it means that it was totally shitty at release but has been significantly improved since then. At least, that was my impression from the reviews.

Anyway, I decided not to buy that bundle.

Sounds bad. How did that happen to your Paypal account?

It is an excuse imho but quite a creative one. It does sound like Scorched Earth strategy though which has been banned by the Geneva Convention. I hope the amount wasn't too much. You could have transferred the money to a trustworthy RL friend for safekeeping, many options other than just spending it on games. Buying games wasn't the only course of action but addiction can narrow our field of vision. Anyway, It's too late to undo so don't beat yourself up over it.

I've been clean for 42 days now, several very close calls since I looked at many sales and didn't try to "look away". Was really tempted to buy Telepath Tactics when it was on sale here but fortunately the sale wasn't deep enough and since I have to always buy two copies, I could eventually dodge and land a saving throw.

I donno, I just find I get a E-mail from paypal and it told me I have to verify my address / photo with it, or it will limit my account.

Digging deeper I find that eBay and PayPal are now separate companies. which may explain something. It seems to go the way of facebook and want your personal information even though it is fine without it for years.

Is that picture actually from your Paypal account, or is it from an email you have received? As I receive fairly regular emails from scammers, claiming that I need to provide more information or else my account will be limited. I know you're probably aware of this, but I'd hate to see anyone get caught out by this scam.