Steam’s sales events are quite legendary – and consistent – with hundreds of titles always available. Heck, there’s even one going on at the moment with the Steam Lunar New Year Sale ending tomorrow. But this week has also seen Valve reveal its plans for the next six months, detailing what sales and events will be heading your way.
First on the agenda is a big one, Steam’s Next Fest. If you remember last year’s, it’s a pure festival of gaming demos, with a bewildering array of virtual reality (VR) and non-VR videogames to sample. It’ll run from 21st – 28th February, hopefully giving you enough time to play all those demos. And if you somehow miss that one, there will be a summer Next Fest in June, with exact dates to be confirmed.
When it comes to sales the next big event is the annual Steam Summer Sale which is scheduled to take place between 23rd June – 7th July 2022. Valve notes that: “Any game released at least 28 days before June 21 is welcome to participate.”
Continuing with the sales theme, are Themed Sales, dedicated to highlighting particular categories of videogames. This should give some titles greater visibility that may get lost during the larger discount events. Five themed events have been announced so far with more planned later in the year to highlight even more genres.
Themed Sales
- Remote Play Together: 28th February to 7th March
- JRPG: 14th – 21st March
- SimFest – Hobby Edition: 28th March – 4th April
- Die-a-lot: 2nd – 9th May (includes Roguelites, Metroidvanias or Souls-like games)
- Racing: 23rd – 30th May
- Survival: 18th – 25th July
In addition to these sales events, Steam will also be changing several of its discount rules for developers, rolling out from 28th March. Devs will be given greater flexibility to discount their games, so the time between discounts will change from six to four weeks (28 days). Other rules include not being able to alter price while a promotion is live and that it’s: “not possible to discount a product by more than 90% or less than 10%.”
For continued updates on the latest VR deals and discounts, keep reading gmw3.
