Instead of waiting for leakers and data miners, Valve has gone ahead and officially announced the dates of all the upcoming store-wide sales and genre/demo festival events it has planned for 2023.
Every year, Valve hosts four major Steam-wide seasonal discount promotions. First up is the Spring Sale in March, which is followed by Summer Sale in June, Autumn Sale in November, and lastly Winter Sale in December.
In between those major sales are where Valve is injecting its "Fests", events dedicated to lifting up a specific genre (like sports or strategy) or simply offering hordes of demos from upcoming titles (Next Fests) to try out. Even now, this year"s Mystery Fest is live on the Steam store with games featuring detective and investigation elements.
Here"s everything that"s coming and their event dates in bullet form:
- Mystery Fest: February 20 - 27
- Spring Sale: March 16 - 23 (major seasonal sale)
- Puzzle Fest: April 24 - May 1
- Sports Fest: May 15 - 22
- Next Fest: June 19 - 26
- Summer Sale: June 29 - July 13 (major seasonal sale)
- Stealth Fest: July 24 - 31
- Visual Novel Fest: August 7 - 14
- Strategy Fest: August 28 - September 4
- SHMUP Fest: September 25 - October 2
- Next Fest: October 9 - 16
- Return of Steam Scream Fest (Halloween): October 26 - November 2
- Autumn Sale: November 21 - 28 (major seasonal sale)
- Winter Sale: December 21 - January 4, 2024 (major seasonal sale)
While the announcement is directed at developers and publishers using Steam as a sales platform, it"s a handy resource for regular digital shoppers as well. As such, with the Spring Sale only a few weeks away, those looking to lighten their wallets via Steam may want to hold off on any major PC game purchases until then.