The time has come for gamers the world over to joke about burying their wallets in the backyard, but they’ll never do it. The Steam Summer Sale is starting Thursday, and that means big sales on games. An embarrassingly small number of those games will ever be played. But the prices are really good! Be honest, you’re going to buy things.

This is a twice annual tradition on the Steam Store; once in the winter and again in the summer. The summer sale has been going on longer—the winter sales only started in 2015. During these sales, Steam discounts games by huge margins, sometimes as 90 percent off. That sort of discount is usually reserved for games that are a few years old, but even newer titles can show up for half price. This has left many of us with embarrassingly large Steam libraries filled with unplayed games. If you want to feel especially bad, there are services like Steam Calculator that can tell you how much you’ve spent on games.

As is becoming tradition, the date of the Steam Sale was revealed by PayPal. In this case, PayPal UK tweeted that the sale was starting on June 22nd at 1PM Eastern (10AM Pacific). PayPal UK is offering customers £5 off if they spend £20 or more on Steam, hence the reason for the tweet. PayPal’s deal is valid through July 5th, indicating the Steam sale will end around then. Valve didn’t want to confirm anything at first, but it later admitted that, yes, the sale is starting tomorrow.

Steams Summer Sale is not as stress-inducing as it once was thanks to the refund system that Valve added in 2015. If you regret your purchase in the morning, you can request a refund. The only catch is you must request that refund within two weeks of buying the game, and you have played it for less than two hours. The Steam store offers a handy play time stat so you can know for sure.

So, what should you buy? That all depends on what goes on sale. Valve used to rotate the discounted games regularly throughout the sale, but it’s been less creative lately. That makes it a little less stressful, too. You should have time to debate the merits of paying $10 for a game that only recently cost $40. We all know what you’re going to decide, though. You’ll buy it, and maybe you’ll play it… some day.



ExtremeTech