Steam Summer Sale 2020: the best deals and PC games on the Steam marketplace
The Steam Summer Sale 2020 is kicking off on June 25, and it comes with major deals and discounts on popular games.
You know the drill by now: if you’re a PC gamer who uses Steam, the chances are that you’ve got a library of games full to bursting point that you’ve never even installed, let alone played. But the Steam platform’s regular sales, offering such heavily discounted deals as they do, mean that you won’t be able to resist picking up a couple of extra games with which to collect digital dust.
And so, for the next two weeks, the Steam Summer Sale will be running, letting you get your hands on PC gaming titles you may have missed, for cheap.
While there are always a smattering of 20-40% price cuts, you’ll also find a good number of half-price or 75% offers on certain games and franchises, while 90% savings aren’t unheard of either – and are often the best ways to get your hands on a lot of add-on or DLC content bundled in for no extra cost.
We’re still waiting on this summer’s line up to be revealed, but this page will be constantly updated throughout the sale to surface the best offers once they become available.
This guide will run you through how to get the best out of the Steam Summer Sale 2020, as well as the other seasonal Steam Sales throughout the year.
The best Steam Summer Sale 2020 deals
We’re expecting thousands of games to receive discounts, but we won’t be certain of which until the Steam Summer Sale 2020 officially kicks off.
So when’s that? We’ve heard that the Steam Summer Sale 2020 will run June 25 to July 9, and will kick off at 10 PM PT / 1 PM ET / 6 PM BST.
Check back then for our picks of the best deals, but in the meantime, you can currently pick up one of the best Sonic games in decades, Sonic Generations, at pocket-money prices.
How to get the best deals in the Steam Sales
Whichever way you approach a particular Steam Sale, you’re guaranteed to have the chance to pick up some top gaming titles at great prices.
Finding bargains isn’t too difficult, but there are a few techniques and tricks that are worth using if you want to get the most out of the sales.
- Use your Steam Wishlist: Fill it up with all the games you’re interested in picking up, and you’ll be alerted the moment they go on sale, and how much they’ve been discounted by.
- Bundles are great: Publishers often pull their titles together in sale mega-packs, ramping up the savings to even greater heights. If there’s a suite of titles from a publisher like Square Enix or Activision that you’ve never played before, this is the best – and cheapest – way to bag them all at once. As you’d imagine, the value diminishes if you’ve already got a few bundled titles in your library.
- Highlighted deals are where the real savings are: The majority of the Steam store back-catalogue will get some sort of price cut, but it’s the ‘Highlighted’ deals (the ones promoted on the Steam front splash page) that tend to be more heavily discounted. These are the ones where you may fall into impulse-buy territory. Which leads us on to our next tip…
- Only buy what you’ll actually play right away: Once those 75% off signs start floating around, you’re going to want to break open the piggy-bank. But the Steam Sales of yesteryear have proved that our desire for overflowing game libraries leaves us with more titles than we could ever humanly play. Save some cash, and only grab the ones you’re really going to play – keep in mind that if you wait a while, the games will almost certainly get cheaper as they get older.
- Use this browser extension: Want to make sure you’re getting a good deal? Use the Enhanced Steam browser extension. This gives you a historical look at the price of all Steam games, letting you see just how many pennies have been saved.
What games will be in the Steam Sales?
First off, you shouldn’t expect brand-new games to get the really steep discounts that have become synonymous with the Steam sales. You may see a 5%, or even 10% discount on games that have been recent big hits, but if they’re still new enough to be spinning money without needing a price cut, don’t expect that to change now that the sale is here.
But, with the exception of the newer titles, pretty much the entire store receives a 25% discount, if not higher, with a select few seeing a massive 90% off the list price. While the store now highlights what Valve considers the best deals, it’s worth noting that flash and community sales are no longer in the mix, so feel free to pick a title on sale when you like – its discounted price will stand for the duration of the sale.