Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time. Valve launched the Steam Autumn Sale on October 1, its annual fall sales event — and this year’s edition is a one-weeker, running until October 8.
The scale is, as ever, absurd. Steam’s own store filter puts more than 25,000 games and DLC packages on sale, and per SteamDB a staggering 44,048 games are going for $5 or less. As PC Gamer puts it, that adds up to the usual “Valve-powered seasonal trauma inflicted on your personal finances” — alongside the deep discounts, there are stickers to earn and new items in the Points Shop.
Deals Worth Grabbing
Kotaku has been digging through the sale for standouts, and the highlights include some all-time greats for pocket change: Hitman World of Assassination for $3 (down from $30), Portal 2 and Left 4 Dead for $2 each, XCOM 2 for $3, Metro Exodus for $3, and Control for $6. Bigger names are heavily cut too: Red Dead Redemption 2 for $15 (from $60), Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 for $15 (from $60), Skyrim for $4, Titanfall 2 for $5, Resident Evil 4 for $10, and Balatro for $12. VR owners can grab Half-Life: Alyx for $15 (from $60).
How to Find the Good Stuff
With tens of thousands of cheap games, a lot of them won’t be top-tier — so PC Gamer recommends using SteamDB’s sales filter to winnow things down: cap the price at $5, then layer on genre and feature tags, release dates, and a minimum user rating or review count. It’s the difference between browsing and digging.
The sale caps a huge stretch for the platform — a year in which Steam has already seen records like Deadlock’s all-time-high 228,086 concurrent players. The Autumn Sale runs until October 8, so the backlog-building window is officially open.