Steam’s annual winter Sale is on now, but before you go and empty your wallet, here are some helpful tips to make sure you get the most for your money and catch the titles you really want.


If you’re not familiar with Steam’s regular sales, the winter sale is usually around the end of December, and can net gamers huge discounts on popular titles released during the second half of the year, as well as slightly older games you might have missed. Even popular, best-selling, and newly released titles can see huge discounts, on the order of 75% to 90% off in some cases. Those discounts are hard to resist, but there’s a method to Steam’s madness. Here’s how to get the games you want for as little as possible.


Fill Up Your Wishlist Now

One of Steam’s best features is that they’ll send you an email alert when a game on your wishlist goes on sale. It’s both a blessing and a curse—you’ll be able to jump right on that sale, but you also may jump on a sale that’s a little premature. We’ll get to how to tell when your favorite game is discounted as deep as it’s going to get in a second, but for the time being, go ahead and load up your wishlist with titles you’ve been meaning to check out. That way you’ll at least be notified, and you won’t miss them.

Know Your Steam Sale Types

Steam sales as we used to know them—with broad discounts, daily deals, flash sales, and community choice deals, has changed. Now, each steam sale has two major types of discounts going on at the same time:

The broad, store-wide discount that any game not released in the past six months gets . This discount is usually anywhere between 25% to 75%.

. This discount is usually anywhere between 25% to 75%. “Highlighted Deals,” where selected games that are on sale all week get floated to the front of the store. These discounts are generally a bit steeper, but still in the 50-75% range. These are the deals you really want to grab, since they’re the bulk of the actual “sale.”


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When to Buy, and When to Skip


Steam sales have changed. Gone are the flash deals and the community sales—now there’s a set of games that are on sale all week, and “highlighted deals” where a few select games make it to the front page of the store, but that’s it. We have yet to see whether those discounts stick all week, but we’re willing to bet they do, and there will be no more “this game wasn’t on sale yesterday, but here it is, 66% off.”

If you miss your favorite game as a highlighted deal, don’t fret, you can buy it anyway. It used to be that games that were deeply discounted during one day of the sale would return on the last day as an Encore Sale. Well, now that there are no daily or flash sales, if a game is on sale, that’s the price it’ll be all week. This is the first year those flash discounts are gone, so we have yet to see if Valve will keep all deals at the same discount all week everything we’re reading says they will, but keep an eye out.


The Exception: Buy Bundles Any Time You Want

Publisher bundles are almost always ridiculously deep discounts. If you’re looking at an Activision bundle or a Eidos bundle and wondering if those prices will get any better, stop wondering and just buy it. The side effect is that you wind up with a bunch of games you may not want to play, but if everything in the bundle interests you, it can be a fantastic discount for a ton of games.


Before you buy any game on sale, make sure to check a publisher bundle to see if the game is discounted in the bundle as well. You never know, it may be a steeper discount in the bundle than it is on its own. It’s not terribly likely, but you should always check first. While you’re at it, check DLC (Downloadable Content) prices. Sometimes a title you want has a ton of DLC that’s also on sale too for as little as $1, and it’s worth buying them all together.

How to Know When You’re Getting the Biggest Discount


Now there’s only one discount level, so you’re always getting the deepest cut. That means if you see Bioshock Infinite for sale for 60% off highlighted on Tuesday, even if it never floats back to the front page of the store, you’ll always get that same discount. Still, as the Scientific Gamer notes, new games that have been recently released will usually only get a 25%-40% cut. Grab it if you really really want it, but deeper discounts will come in the next few months. 50%-66% off are modest discounts, worth jumping on if you want the title or have been meaning to pick it up, and if the title is an Indie or a cheap game anyway, go for it. You run the risk of seeing a steeper discount after the sale is over, but probably not. Anything discounted 75% or more is the cheapest you’ll ever see it on Steam. Go for it.



Use Technology to Help You

If you don’t want to be bothered with emails from Steam, check out the Steam mobile apps for Android and iOS. You can keep track on the sales anywhere you go, and if there’s a special event, you’ll be able to check the prices from your smartphone.


Similarly, check out Enhanced Steam for Chrome and Firefox. The extension gives you full price histories for the games you browse, helps you avoid buying DLC you already own, notifies you when a game you’re looking at has third-party DRM (worthwhile for finding out if a game requires Games for Windows Live or Ubisoft’s UPlay before you buy it and find out), and shows you how much you’re really saving on a bundle purchase. If you haven’t tried it, it’s worth installing.

Finally, if you use Steam Wallet to make your purchases, load it up ahead of time. You don’t want to get stuck in the last moments of a sale trying to add funds and then process a sale only to be denied because the transactions are taking too long. For more suggestions, check out this post over at GHacks.


Remember: Steam Doesn’t Always Have the Best Deals


Lastly, while Steam Sales are indeed awesome, keep in mind that it may not have the lowest prices—even during the week the sale is on. (Last year, for example, BioShock was cheaper on Amazon during the sale than it was on Steam!) So be sure to check out other stores using a tool like IsThereAnyDeal.com to make sure you’re not missing out on a better price. And if you’re going to buy 20 games, keep your Steam library organized to make your life easier.


If you already have a handle on these tips, head over to our friends at Kotaku for their additional suggestions on how to save the most money and still come away with great games.


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Keep an eye out for your favorite titles, make your wishlist in advance, set a budget for yourself (seriously, otherwise you will empty your wallet), and have fun. Then spend some time actually playing through your backlog so you can get to the games you just bought.