In context: Steam’s latest annual Winter Sale has finally arrived, bringing the year’s best deals on old and new PC releases alike. Alongside the sale, 2020’s Steam Awards have kicked off, allowing users to vote for their favorite titles across a wide range of categories.
Unfortunately, the 2020 Winter Sale seems to reinforce what we’ve believed to be true for some time now: Valve appears to be completely done with seasonal meta-events.
As in many recent Steam sales, the Winter Sale is lacking any sort of minigame or giveaway, which used to be a tradition on the storefront some years back. Ultimately, shoppers probably won’t care, though — the most important part of the yearly Winter Sales are always the game discounts themselves. Perhaps allowing them to take center stage from here on out is for the best.
So, what sort of deals can you expect to see on Steam this year? Most major PC releases of the past few years are available at a steep discount, with some recent titles getting slightly more modest price cuts.
Control’s Ultimate Edition, for example, is just $19 (50 percent off), and Halo: The Master Chief Collection can be snagged for around $24, or 40 percent off its usual sticker price. Hideo Kojima’s excellent Death Stranding is also 50 percent off at $30, and the beautifully-detailed Red Dead Redemption 2 comes in at $40, saving you $20.
We’ll let you peruse Steam’s full catalog of deals yourself — it should be a fairly easy process, as Valve has organized its sale page quite nicely this time around. There are dedicated sections for “up to 75% percent off” deals, as well as games under $10 (which include excellent titles like Dragon Age Inquisition and Titanfall 2).
As we briefly mentioned before, you can also vote in the 2020 Steam Awards, selecting your favorite game from several categories, including Game of the Year, VR Game of the Year, Labor of Love, and more.
The Steam Winter sale ends on January 5 at 10am PT.