Sigma Theory: Global Cold War
Skip · Strategy · 2019
The verdict
SKIP IT.
The value isn't there at $17.99.
- Reviews
- 76% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 1 GB of memory, NVIDIA GT 440 or AMD Radeon HD 5550 w/ 512 MB, 1 GB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux.
A Turn-based Strategy game in a futuristic global cold war from the award-winning creators of Out There. Recruit a squad of special agents and run your intel agency to secure the control of the singularity.
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
- How long it takes to beat isn't in our data. We scored it as a typical Strategy game (about 8 hours) and docked the score for the missing length.
The value story
It has never been cheaper than $2.69. That was December 2024. 44 discounts in the 7 years on record. They run about 70 percent off, roughly 7 weeks apart. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 6 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 7 weeks.
Against its own genre it lands in the top 48 percent on value. It is pricier than 86 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 65 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Democracy 3 ($24.99, scores 39) beats it on value, while it beats Victoria 3 ($49.99, scores 28).
Of the 343 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, 5 come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written March 2020 to August 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 54 percent of the 123 reviews written there were positive, against 76 percent overall, and those are 14 percent of everything written about it.
The drop-off
76% start to 3% rarestNo achievement in this game marks the ending, so there is no finish rate. The curve runs from the most-unlocked achievement to the rarest, and its shape is where players stop. Steam global achievements
Players
1 players at peak in the last day.
The chart appears once this game has been counted more than once.Player counts via SteamSpy.
No data upstream: critic score (Metacritic).
Cite this score
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Sigma Theory: Global Cold War scores 31/100 on the BANG Score (a skip). Length is estimated at 8 hours, not measured, so the score is docked. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/716640/sigma-theory-global-cold-warThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Aug 2, price as of Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.