How to Get the Best Deals During This Week’s Steam Sale
The annual Steam Winter Sale has started now, but before you go and empty your wallet, here are some helpful tips to help you get the most out of your money and get the games you really need.
If you’re unfamiliar with regular Steam sales, the Winter Sale usually takes place around the end of December and can bring gamers huge discounts on popular games released in the second half of the year, as well as slightly older games that you may have missed out on. … Even popular, in-demand and recently released games can get huge discounts, in some cases from 75% to 90%. These discounts are hard to resist, but there is a way to Steam madness. Here’s how to get the games you want as little as possible.
Complete your wishlist now
One of the best features of Steam is that they will send you an email notification when a game on your wishlist goes on sale. It’s both a blessing and a curse – you’ll be able to take advantage of this sale right away, but you can also apply for a sale, which is a bit premature. We’ll learn how to tell when your favorite game is depreciating as much as possible in a second, but for now, go ahead and load your wishlist with the titles you were about to check out. That way you will at least be notified and don’t miss them.
Know Your Types of Steam Sales
Steam sales as we’re used to knowing them – with massive discounts, daily deals, flash sales, and community choice deals – have changed . There are now two main types of discounts on every Steam sale at the same time:
- A wide store-wide discount for any game not released in the past six months . This discount is usually between 25% and 75%.
- Highlighted Deals, where featured games that are on sale throughout the week are displayed at the front of the store . These discounts are usually slightly higher, but are still in the 50-75% range. These are the deals you really want to do as they make up the bulk of the actual “sale.”
When to buy and when to skip
Steam sales have changed . Gone are flash deals and public sales – now there is a selection of games that sell all week and “highlighted offers” where a few select games land on the front page of the store, but that’s about it. We have yet to find out if these discounts are valid all week, but we bet they are, and will no longer be “this game was not on sale yesterday, but here it is, 66% off.”
If you’ve missed your favorite game as a dedicated deal, don’t worry, you can still buy it . It used to be that games that had big discounts during one day of sale would return on the last day as a sale on Encore . Well, now that there are no daily or flash sales , if the game is on sale, that will be the price of the whole week. This is the first year that these flash discounts have disappeared, so we have yet to see if Valve will keep all offers at the same discount all week, everything we read says they will, but stay tuned.
Exception: Buy kits anytime.
Publisher packages almost always offer ridiculously large discounts. If you’re looking at an Activision or Eidos package and wondering if those prices are going to get better, stop asking and just buy it. A side effect is that you get a bunch of games that you might not want to play, but if everything in the kit interests you, this can be a fantastic discount on a ton of games.
Before purchasing any discounted game, be sure to check the publisher’s kit to see if a discounted game is included in that bundle. You never know, maybe the bundled discount is steeper than the discount itself. This is unlikely, but you should always check first. While you are doing this, check the DLC (Downloadable Content) prices. Sometimes the title you want has a ton of DLCs that also sell for just $ 1 and are worth buying all together.
How to know when you are getting the biggest discount
There is now only one discount tier, so you always get the maximum benefit . This means that if you see Bioshock Infinite selling 60% off on Tuesday, even if it never returns to the store homepage, you will always get the same discount. However, Scientific Gamer notes that new games that have been released recently usually only get 25-40% off. Grab it if you really want it, but bigger discounts are coming in the next few months. The 50% -66% off are modest discounts worth jumping into if you are looking to get the name or were about to get it, and if the name is indie or a cheap game, go for it anyway. You run the risk of seeing a big discount after the sale ends, but you probably won’t. Anything with 75% off or more is the cheapest item you’ll ever see on Steam. Take action.
Use technology to help you
If you don’t want to be disturbed by emails from Steam, try the Steam mobile apps for Android and iOS. You can track sales anywhere, and in the event of a special event, you can check prices from your smartphone.
Similarly, check out Enhanced Steam for Chrome and Firefox. The extension gives you a complete price history of the games you are watching, helps you avoid buying DLC you already have, notifies you when the game you are watching has a third-party DRM (useful for figuring out if a game requires Games for Windows Live or UPlay from Ubisoft before you buy and recognize it) and will show you how much you really save on purchasing the package. If you haven’t tried it yet, it’s worth installing.
Finally, if you are using the Steam Wallet to make purchases, download it ahead of time. You don’t want to get hung up on the last moments of the sale trying to add funds and then process the sale only to be rejected because the transactions are taking too long. To learn more, read this post on GHacks .
Remember: Steam is not always the best deal
Finally, while the sales on Steam are truly amazing, keep in mind that they may not have the lowest prices – even during the week when the sale is ongoing. (Last year, for example, BioShock was cheaper on Amazon during sale than it was on Steam!) So be sure to check other stores using a tool like IsThereAnyDeal.com to make sure you don’t miss out on the best price. … And if you’re going to buy 20 games, keep your Steam library in order to make your life easier.
If you’re already familiar with these tips, reach out to our friends at Kotaku for additional suggestions on how to save money as much as possible while still getting great games .
Keep track of your favorite games, make a wish list ahead of time, set a budget for yourself (seriously, otherwise you’ll empty your wallet) and have fun. Then take some time to go through your backlog to navigate to the games you just bought.