Valve has revealed their upcoming schedule of Steam game sales on their official blog.
Without further ado, here is the schedule:
- 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 (additional details to come)
- Autumn Sale: November 21 – 28 (major seasonal sale)
- Winter Sale: December 21 – January 4, 2024 (major seasonal sale)
As Valve had previously explained, for the sake of making the other sale periods more effective, they have narrowed down the seasonal sales down to four season sales per year.
Other than these special sale events, they also have themed sales, were specific types of games are put on sale. Examples of these themed sales are Strategy Fest and SHMUP Fest.
Lastly, Valve runs their own Steam Next Fest events. For these events, Valve facilitates livestreams, chat events with developers, and other activities to help developers get feedback from fans for their upcoming games. While Valve doesn’t mention it here, this event is obviously made for games on Early Access.
Valve explained that they run Steam Next Fest events three times a year, and the first Steam Next Fest event for 2023 is actually ongoing right now, for this month of February.
While Valve organizes multiple sale events on Steam every year, the truth is gamers usually expect that there will always be something on sale on Steam every weekend. Valve is also usually good with allowing companies and individual developers to put their games up on sale regardless if they’re part of the sales events or not.
The sales events themselves address a major issue Valve has with managing a marketplace with their size. It is definitely impossible for any single user to purchase the entirety of what’s on sale on Steam, even if free to play games are off the equation. So, the purpose of the sales events is to help developers get attention for their games, particularly to grab interest from the gamers who would want to play their games.
