The best deals in the 2022 Steam Winter Sale
(Image credit: Creative Assembly)
Tens of thousands of new games pile onto Steam each year, which has made the seasonal sales harder and harder to tame. Sure, the Steam front page features a good selection of popular games, but what else is lurking down Steam’s less-visited aisles? What strange gizmos and anomalies await discovery deeper in the Steam labyrinth? And what 2022 games are—surprise!—already on sale, despite still having that new game smell?
We’ve gone on an expedition into the reaches of Steam to find the best Winter Sale deals, and below you’ll find our picks for the best discounts on games released this year, followed by some of our favorite popular and niche games from past years organized into under $25, under $10, and sub-$5 picks. Among all of them, we hope you find something new to play, or something you’ve been waiting for at just the right price.
The Winter Sale is long: It lasts until January 5, and also includes voting for the annual Steam Awards . The next big Steam sale will come in the spring.
2022 games on sale
Elden Ring | $41.99 / £34.99 (30% off)
This is the first discount we’ve seen for FromSoftware’s 2022 magnum opus, which captivated even some of PC Gamer’s biggest soulsborne skeptics when it released in February. 30% off is a pretty decent reward for waiting less than 12 months to play the year’s biggest game.
Total War: Warhammer 3 | $44.99 / £37.49 (25% off)
It’s not a huge price cut, but it’s a discount on 2022’s best strategy game. Pretty swell. To play the Immortal Empires sandbox mega-campaign, you’ll need to own both the previous entries as well. Fortunately, they’re also discounted in a Total War: Warhammer bundle that’s 75% off.
Pentiment | $14.99 / £11.24 (25% off)
Give Fallout: New Vegas developers Obsidian free reign to follow a passion project and this is what you get: a historical murder mystery in the style of medieval art.
Everything you say might have consequences, and there are no easy answers. It’s basically Fresco Elysium.
Strange Horticulture | $9.74 / £9.09 (35% off)
Inheriting a plant shop where nothing is labeled sounds stressful, but it’s actually a wonderful combination of cozy and spooky thanks to fascinatingly odd customers, and a cat you can pet. We just named Strange Horticulture the year’s best puzzle game, and this is a sweet price for the year’s best anything.
Norco | $8.99 / £6.83 (40% off)
A point-and-click adventure for the post-Disco Elysium era. Norco is deeply specific and personal, set in the real life Norco, Louisiana, but with some otherwordly near-future twists, like androids and a (only slightly) more evil version of Uber run by a sentient AI duck. It’s weird as hell and will sit with you long after you finish it.
Rollerdrome | $19.79 / £16.49 (34% off)
Not to be confused with Roller Champions, Ubisoft’s roller derby game, nor with Videodrome, the Cronenberg movie in which James Woods inserts his head into a television set, this is an ultra-stylish third-person roller skate shooter that we loved when it released this summer.
Vampire Survivors | $3.99 / £3.19 (20% off)
Earlier in 2022, we called Vampire Survivors «one of the best deals you can get on PC» at its full price: $4.99. Now it’s on sale for just $3.99, putting its good dealness off the charts.
Stray | $23.99 / £19.19 (20% off)
A little discount on the popular cat adventure game that released in July. For some of us, Stray’s appeal relies too heavily on the novelty of being a cat, but others of us would argue that’s a very dog-person thing to say.
Immortality | $14.99 / £11.61 (25% off)
A modest discount on the 2022 game the received one of our highest review scores of the year. This FMV detective puzzle game may be Her Story creator Sam Barlow’s best yet.
Ghostwire: Tokyo | $23.99 / £19.99 (60% off)
One of many games overshadowed by Elden Ring early this year, Tango Gameworks’ action-adventure set on the spooky, demon-infested streets of Tokyo is a good grab at 60% off its launch price.
Grounded | $26.79 / £23.44 (33% off)
Obsidian’s fun backyard survival game came out of early access this year, and got an enthusiastic recommendation from Fraser, who called it «delightfully creative and occasionally terrifying» in our review. This is a little cheaper than it was in the Autumn Sale.
Citizen Sleeper | $13.99 / £10.84 (30% off)
You’re essentially a sad, decaying Blade Runner replicant trying to make a life for yourself in this well-written RPG. It does a lot with a little, sucking you into a «just one more» routine as you roll dice to determine what you can do day by day.
God of War | $29.99 / £23.99 (40% off)
Sony brought its best to PC and now it’s 40% off, which is much better than the 25% off Steam Autumn Sale discount just a few months ago. This port has all the bells and whistles we could ask for, like DLSS and widescreen monitor support, and runs on middle-of-the-line machines.
Teardown | $15.99 / £14.79 (20% off)
A physics-based, voxel-powered playground melded with a genius puzzle game: «If I blow up this entire mansion, will I have space to drive this sportscar into the ocean?» It came out of early access this year with a full campaign and enhanced modding tools.
More great 2022 games on sale
Below, find more discounts on some of 2022’s best games (anything we scored 80%+ in our reviews this year), organized from smallest to biggest discount.
10-15% off
- Signalis | $17.99/£14.39 (10% off)
- Potionomics | $22.49/£17.99 (10% off)
- The Case of the Golden Idol | $15.29/£14.44 (15% off)
- Tactics Ogre: Reborn | $42.49/£33.99 (15% off)
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 | $59.49/£50.99 (15% off)
20-25% off
- Two Point Campus | $31.99/£27.99 (20% off)
- Neon White | $19.99/£15.99 (20% off)
- Shadows Over Loathing | $18.39/£15.99 (20% off)
- Kynseed | $19.99 /£15.99 (20% off)
- Return to Monkey Island | $19.
99/£15.59 (20% off) - Hyper Demon | $11.99/£9.11 (20% off)
- This Way Madness Lies | $7.99/£5.75 (20% off)
- Spider-Man Remastered | $44.99/£37.49 (25% off)
- Cult of the Lamb | $18.74/£14.61 (25% off)
- A Plague Tale: Requiem | $37.49/£32.99 (25% off)
30-35% off
- AI: The Somnium Files — nirvanA Initiative | $41.99/£34.99 (30% off)
- Scorn | $27.99/£22.39 (30% off)
- Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection | $34.99/£31.49 (30% off)
- Symphony of War: The Nephilim Saga | $13.99/£10.84 (30% off)
- Persona 5 Royal | $41.99/£34.99 (30% off)
- Card Shark | $13.99/£11.75 (30% off)
- Hardspace: Shipbreaker | $23.
44/£20.09 (33% off) - Nobody Saves the World | $16.24/£12.66 (35% off)
- Sunday Gold | $14.29/£11.36 (35% off)
40-50% off
- The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe | $14.99/£11.99 (40% off)
- Hard West 2 | $16.49/£13.19 (45% off)
- Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands | $29.99/£27.49 (50% off)
- Monster Hunter Rise | $19.99/£16.49 (50% off)
- Dying Light 2: Stay Human | $29.99 / £27.49 (50% off)
- Time on Frog Island | $9.99/£7.74 (50% off)
- DNF Duel | $24.99/£20.49 (50% off)
Steam Winter Sale: $25 and under
Zero Escape: The Nonary Games | $11.99 / £9.51 (60% off)
One of PC Gamer’s, and a lot of other people’s, all time favorite visual novels.
Selected for no particular reason other than that it feels like the kind of thing you might binge over a holiday break.
Chivalry 2 | $19.99 / £17.99 (50% off)
The best first-person medieval warfare game available now. Chiv 2 came out last year, but released on Steam this year with a big update that added a new faction and horses. This is its lowest price, which it also saw during the Steam Autumn Sale.
Hunt: Showdown | $15.99 / £14.39 (60% off)
Don’t tell Warzone 2 DMZ, but this is the best extraction shooter, and here it is at its lowest price yet. This might finally be the right price if you’ve been waiting to convince a couple friends to join you on the hunt.
Mafia: Definitive Edition | $13.99 / £12.24 (65% off)
You wanna be a wise guy, wise guy? Tommy guns, pinstripe suits, a meditation on the ultimate hollowness of the fantasy while still going all in on that fantasy: our favorite mafioso bits are present and accounted for.
Hitman 3 | $20.99 / £17.49 (65% off)
The final chapter of one of the best stealth games ever made, and number five on our list of the Top 100 PC games you can play right now, is at its lowest recorded price, which it last saw during the Autumn Sale.
Steam Winter Sale: $10 and under
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt | $7.99 / £4.99 (80% off)
If you’ve been patient waiting for the exact right time to play what many people consider the best RPG of all time, you might have found it: it’s less than ten bucks and just got a big visual update. You’re not seven years late to the party, you just feel that games age like wine.
Sunless Skies | $9.99 / £7.59 (60% off)
A PC Gamer favorite—we’re suckers for grim, wordy adventures—Sunless Skies puts you in charge of a steam locomotive.
.. in spaaaace. It’s good roleplaying fun, with some of the sharpest videogame writing you’ll find.
Super Mega Baseball 3 | $8.99 / £6.99 (80% off)
It’d be understandable to be turned off by Super Mega Baseball’s unserious title and cartoon stylings, but it’s truly one of our favorite PC sports games. A 90% we gave this one just a couple years ago, and here it is for $9.
Civilization 6 | $5.99 / £4.99 (90% off)
Old World may be the hot new thing in civilization building grand strategy, but for $6, this is a game you can easily disappear into for entire weekends at a time. (If you get the $29.77 Anthology Bundle, you get the DLC and upcoming new leaders, too.)
Slay the Spire | $8.49 / £6.62 (66% off)
Slay the Spire remains our favorite deckbuilder, as perfect an execution of the genre as we’ve seen.
This price matches its last two Steam Sale discounts, so it seems like 66% off is as low as it’s going for now.
Monster Train | $6.24 / £4.87 (75% off)
Already played Slay the Spire to death? Some of us would say that Monster Train is our second-favorite deckbuilder, and it’s never sold for less than this on Steam.
Steam Winter Sale: $5 and under
Metro 2033 Redux | $3.99 / £2.99 (80% off)
One of the all-time best singleplayer shooters by a lot of measures. The original released in 2010, while the Redux version bumped it up to 4A’s latest engine tech in 2014. A damn good FPS for $4.
Ikaruga | $4.99 / £3.49 (50% off)
We don’t talk about bullet hell games too often here at PC Gamer, so when we noticed that one of the best to ever release on PC was on sale for $5, we felt compelled to mention it. Be warned that Ikaruga is gruesomely difficult (but we know how many of you enjoy that kind of thing).
The Aquatic Adventure of the Last Human | $0.99 / £0.71 (90% off)
An even deeper cut than Ikaruga, this is a fantastic and largely-overlooked metroidvania from 2016. Grab it for $1 and you’ll probably be the only person you know who’s played it, which will make you special.
Left 4 Dead 2 | $0.99 / £0.85 (90% off)
New co-op zombie shooter Back 4 Blood it a good price for the sale, but it’s not one dollar. Valve’s classic is over a decade old at this point, but it’s still one of the 100 most-played Steam games, and there are a ton of mods for it.
Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen | $4.79 / £3.83 (84% off)
This is a steep discount on a great fantasy RPG that made its jump to PC back in 2016. Grapple big bosses with your NPC helpers at its steepest Steam discount to date. A sequel is finally in development.
Yakuza 0 | $4.99 / £3.99 (75% off)
Every day is a good day to start the best first Yakuza game you’ll play. Throw your cash at this like it’s the ’80s, baby, and then start punching punks in the face to refill your pockets in the best crime dramedy there is.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon is also at its lowest price.
Steam Winter Sale: 10 years of Game of the Year winners
You can get 10 years’ worth of the best in PC gaming (according to us) for a little over $100. Read about why these games are so special in our Game of the Year awards archive.
- 2022: TBA | Keep an eye on our awards hub . (Hint: The game is on this page.)
- 2021: Valheim | $13.99/£10.84 (30% off)
- 2020: Death Stranding: Director’s Cut | $23.
99/£20.99 (40% off)
- 2019: Disco Elysium | $9.99/£8.74 (75% off)
- 2018: Into the Breach | $10.04/£7.63 (33% off)
- 2017: Divinity: Original Sin 2 | $17.99/£11.99 (60% off)
- 2016: Dishonored 2 | $5.99/£4.99 (80% off)
- 2015: Metal Gear Solid 5 | $4.99/£6.24 (75% off)
- 2014: Alien Isolation | $3.99/£3.59 (80% off)
- 2013: Spelunky | $3.74/£2.74 (75% off)
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Tyler grew up in Silicon Valley during the rise of personal computers, playing games like Zork and Arkanoid on the early PCs his parents brought home. He was later captivated by Myst, SimCity, Civilization, Command & Conquer, Bushido Blade (yeah, he had Bleem!), and all the shooters they call «boomer shooters» now. In 2006, Tyler wrote his first professional review of a videogame: Super Dragon Ball Z for the PS2. He thought it was OK. In 2011, he joined PC Gamer, and today he’s focused on the site’s news coverage. His hobbies include amateur boxing and adding to his 1,200-plus hours in Rocket League.
How long does it take games to be cheap on Steam?
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Seven months. That’s about how long it’ll take for this year’s biggest games to hit a 50 percent discount. Sometimes it happens faster; it took Deus Ex: Mankind Divided only about three months for a Steam sale to cut its price in half. For some games, it takes a bit longer—Grand Theft Auto 5 lasted nearly a year and a half. But if half price is your magic number for buying a new game, expect to wait about seven months for it to enter your sights.
How do we know this? By digging into the last few years of pricing data on Steam, we found a number of clear trends regarding the average time-to-discount across hundreds of games. After grouping games according to price and popularity, consistent patterns emerged, and from these we calculated a few handy rules to keep in mind next time a new release threatens to drain your Steam Wallet.
This article was originally published in 2016 and has been updated to correspond with the latest Steam Summer Sale.
What we learned
Popular big-budget AAA games get a 50% discount after an average of 7 months: expect to wait this long for your Witchers and your Fallouts.
Breakout indie games take a longer 9.2 months to hit 50%, on average: these include your Rocket Leagues and your Undertales, and typically launch at around $20.
The less popular a game is, the faster it will be discounted: for games in the $30+ category, the least commercially-successful dropped in price 60% faster than the bestsellers.
Those are just some quick facts from the data we gathered researching Steam’s discounts. Below are charts showing those price changes over time and trends from the past three years as Steam sales have evolved. We’ve highlighted the most important takeaway from each section of the results.
$30+ games with 900,000+ owners on Steam
Games released in 2014
33% discount average: 58 days (median)
Fastest discount: 46 days | Mean average: 71 days | Slowest discount: 108 days
50% discount average: 192 days (median)
Fastest discount: 66 days | Mean average: 180 days | Slowest discount: 273 days
75% discount average: 435 days (median)
Fastest discount: 275 days | Mean average: 410 days | Slowest discount: 493 days
Conclusions: If we take a closer look at 2014’s data, we can see that both the 50% and 75% averages are skewed by a single game discounted much faster than the rest: Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel in the case of 50%, and Thief in the case of 75%. By removing these two from our calculations, we get slightly longer, but more consistent estimates that better serve our predictive purposes. For 50%, the mean and median converge at 199 days or 6.5 months. For 75%, our estimate hovers around 460 days, or approximately 15 months.
Games released in 2015
25% discount average: 61 days (mean)
Fastest discount: 47 days | Median average: 50 days | Slowest discount: 85 days
33% discount average: 106 days (median)
Fastest discount: 95 days | Mean average: 128 days | Slowest discount: 205 days
50% discount average: 223 days (median)
Fastest discount: 84 days | Mean average: 200 days | Slowest discount: 281 days
Conclusions: Moving onto 2015, our data follow a similar trend. We can again exclude an atypically swift discount to safeguard our estimate—in this case, it’s Football Manager 2016, which hit half price after just 84 days. With it gone, both the mean and median approach a more stable figure of 220 days. Thus, we can expect to wait around 7 months for a top-tier 2015 game to drop from $60 to $30. The half-month (7.7%) difference from 2014’s estimate falls within the bounds of expectation, given the size of the data we’re working with.
Games released in 2016
Conclusions: We did the bulk of this analysis before the end of 2016, so we don’t have the same set of sales data for last year’s sales. But what we do have seems to align with previous years. The 33% tier currently sits at an average of 137 days, which isn’t too far from 2015’s average. Dark Souls 3 and The Division, for example, both hit 50% discounts about eight months after release, not far from the average. Other tiers display greater variance, but given the few data to go on, that’s not unexpected.
It’s also worth mentioning that, across all three years, the 50% tier is far and away the most popular discount among the highest-selling $30+ games. This not particularly surprising, though, since half price is an immediately appealing and easily calculated selling point for most consumers.
$30+ games with 100K — 900K owners on Steam
Games released in 2014
50% discount average: 153 days (mean)
Fastest discount: 51 days | Median average: 155 days | Slowest discount: 280 days
66% discount average: 269 days (median)
Fastest discount: 45 days | Mean average: 249 days | Slowest discount: 407 days
75% discount average: 333 days (median)
Fastest discount: 171 days | Mean average: 342 days | Slowest discount: 686 days
Conclusions: Here we have a more even distribution among the discount tiers. Compared with the most popular games, we see the average time-to-discount dropping by days, weeks, and even months at the higher tiers.
2014’s data are less consistent in this category. Discounts span a wider range of values, with no single value around which the others gravitate. Instead, we find sub-categories within the data that correspond to Steam’s Summer and Winter sales dates, and more importantly, to the dates of specific flash sales. These fleeting offers—removed in late 2015—make calculating a practical estimate difficult; nevertheless, as we’ll see, the averages support the stronger findings in 2015.
Games released in 2015
25% discount average: 67 days (median)
Fastest discount: 23 days | Mean average: 59 days | Slowest discount: 75 days
33% discount average: 110 days (median)
Fastest discount: 94 days | Mean average: 115 days | Slowest discount: 157 days
50% discount average: 189 days (median)
Fastest discount: 85 days | Mean average: 172 days | Slowest discount: 244 days
75% discount average: 353 days (median)
Fastest discount: 184 days | Mean average: 325 days | Slowest discount: 483 days
Conclusions: The removal of flash sales grants us a better distribution of data in 2015. Again, the 50% tier provides the most consistent data, and by excluding Mad Max’s appealing yet anomalous average of 85 days, we get a safe estimate of around 200 days, or 6.5 months to reach half price.
Games released in 2016
Conclusions: While weak on their own, 2016’s discount data point to the trends of previous years remaining stable. A 110-day average for the 33% tier gels with the 2015 estimate, and a 140-day median for 50% falls within the bounds of reasonable variance.
On the next page: analyzing the sales data from games that cost less than $30.
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terms and which games will receive discounts
On the official website, Valve announced the start of the Steam Winter Sale 2022 . As part of the event, a large number of profitable offers, discounts on thousands of games and additional themed gifts in the winter theme are expected.
In this article, we will tell you in detail what awaits players during the New Year promotion and what games you can get at low prices.
Contents
- Steam Winter Sale 2022 Dates
- Steam Winter Sale 2022
- Annual Vote
Steam Winter Sale 2022 Dates
The event will last inclusive until on January 5, 2023 , 21:00 Moscow time.
Steam Winter Sale 2022
In the video announcement of the upcoming event, Valve revealed some of the games that will receive discounts in the Steam New Year Sale 2022. Among them are:
- Fallout 76.
- SD GUNDAM BATTLE ALLIANCE.
- Ready or Not.
- Two Point Campus.
- Persona 5 Royal.
- Sonic Frontiers.
- NARAKA: BLADEPOINT.
- Raft.
- New World.
- Construction Simulator.
- Across the Obelisk.
- F1 Manager 2022.
- Dinkum.
- The Wandering Village.
Listed below are just a few of the designs that are available at discounted prices during the holiday season. In the announcement video, the developers shared that the sale will include games of all genres in single player and cooperative modes: simulators, royal battles, action games and much more. nine0003
If there are any problems with payment, in a separate article we have analyzed in detail all the ways to buy a game on Steam in Russia.
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Annual Voting
In addition, Valve is opening the Annual Voting for the 2022 Steam Awards . Starting from December 16, 21:00 Moscow time, nominees in various categories based on the final results of the autumn competition will be announced. Users will be able to cast their vote simultaneously with the start of the winter promotion — December 22. nine0003
Also, the developers reported about the distribution of free stickers and some «buns», but did not disclose the details. Probably gamers expect additional events and gifts. We will update them as soon as more information becomes available.
We hope our article helped you find out about the timing of the New Year’s Steam sale and what games will appear on the promotion. In the comments of , share your opinion, what other announcements can Valve prepare and will there be a repetition of the quest, like in the summer sale? Follow other gaming news on our website.
nine0003
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Tags: Steam
When Steam discounts in 2022
Next Big Steam Sale in:
Days
Hours
Minutes
Seconds
Sale Started!
What kind of discounts in Steam is a topical issue for many players. Probably, if Valve announced sales in advance, 90% of sales would fall on this period. Therefore, information about when Steam discounts will begin is secret. But no matter how hard they try to make all this data confidential, users have long learned to predict price reductions. nine0003
|
Upcoming Steam Spring Sale 2022 |
Last week of May |
|
Steam Summer Sale 2022 |
Starts between 20 and 30 June and will last for two weeks |
| Steam Halloween Sale 2022 | October 29 — November 01, 2022 |
| Steam Autumn Sale | Starts November 20 — November 30 and will last week |
| Steam Winter Sale 2022 | December 17-30 |
Seasonal sales are the most successful, as they capture the largest number of games with the highest discounts. The schedule is planned in advance, most often it is very similar to the schedule of previous years. Therefore, you can easily predict the approximate discounts on games in Steam.
Check out discounts on publisher bundles: you can buy a series for the price of 1 game. Well, or snatch the entire catalog at a very low cost. Many are wondering if there will be discounts on Steam to buy an add-on. They often add only a couple of hours of game content, but are very expensive. During the sale, you can get a whole series of add-ons for a price lower than for one DLC at the regular price. nine0003
Next discounts in Steam
There is a trend: sales start on the third or fourth Thursday. Yes, this is not accurate information and it cannot be confirmed, but this is the order in which discounts have been going since 2016.
Steam Spring Sale 2022
You can buy Steam at a discount in the last week of May. That is, you will have a week to get everything you want. During this time, you can get the game at a discount of up to 70%. nine0003
We recommend that you add interesting products to your wishlist in advance so that you can be notified during sales. In addition, it will be possible to quickly purchase everything you need.
Summer Sale on Steam in 2022
During the summer holidays, the demand for buying games drops, so in order to somehow support the budget, they make a grand summer sale. During this time, new games are rarely released, so developers have the opportunity to increase sales of their old products. The sale will begin on June 20-30 and will last for two weeks. nine0003
Most often here you can buy new games from Steam with discounts up to 70-80%. In spring and winter, new items are rarely on sale.
Steam Fall Sale 2022
Fall is the time of celebration in the West. Therefore, sales start from Halloween (October 26-30 and until November 1). Everything continues with Black Friday, which can last up to 1 month.
