Making the most of the Steam Sales

Brace yourselves, if the end date of the Steam Auction is anything to go by, the Steam Winter Sale should start on the 18th of December. With that in mind, and I know the format has changed every time a new sale has started I thought best to dig into the archives and pull out the DavePlays.co.uk Steam Sale guide.

The first piece of advice I can give you is to fill your wish list with the games you want or want to keep an eye on, Steam has a neat feature where it will send you an email alert as soon as any game on your wishlist goes on sale, however keep reading for advice on whether or not to buy it immediately.

There are multiple types of Steam Sale, starting with Flash Sales games will generally be on sale for 12 hours or so, Daily Deals these are similar to the flash sales but will generally last 24 hours with discounts normally ranging from 50-75%, Community Choice Deals these are the ones users have the option of voting on then you have the Store Wide Sale which generally means all games not released in the last 6-7 months or so get a price cut ranging anywhere from 25% to 75% and finally you have Publisher Pack sales these are normally the full collection from one specific publisher, where all (or most) games released by them normally (including the DLC’s) on Steam are discounted heavily.

If you are looking for the biggest deals, look out for Daily Deals and Flash Sales, these types of sale offer the biggest discounts to the price of a game, however if you do miss it don’t just buy it anywayas these sales sometimes repeat through the duration of the sale and you can always pick it up on the last day as any discount is better than no discount.

This handy flowchart will help you with you make your choice :

So in short follow these simple steps, doing so will generally mean you get the best deal :

1. Only Buy a game if it is on a “Deal of the Day/Flash Sale/Community Choice” sale.
2. If you see a game you want on discount, check to see if it is in a publisher pack as the discount may be even greater overall and you may end up with two or three games that you want for cheaper.
3. If you miss buying it from one of the above deals, don’t just buy it anyway (wait until the last day of the sale as the same discount may yet come around again).
4. Shop Around, other companies such as Green Man Gaming also have sales to compete with Steam and often sell games as steam codes anyway.

If you are not able to be at your PC all the time, to help make sure that you don’t miss a thing you can download and install the Steam app for your smart phone as well, which you can use to keep an eye on the store.

If you do miss anything during this sale just remember another sale is only a few months away and what you miss or don’t pick up today will likely be included in that sale.

Happy Bargain Hunting!