Is the Steam Summer Sale actually worth it?

We investigate to see if the Steam Summer Sale is actually worth it.

Table of Contents Table of Contents

We’ve all been there, Steam Sale time, we take one look at the masses of games on discount and we buy up because we think we’re getting a great deal. But is that wise? How do we know that these are the best discounts available to us? Is the Steam Summer Sale actually worth it?

“Worth it” is a subjective statement, we’ll be looking at this both subjectively and objectively, just to get a nice mix in there. This is by no means us telling you how to spend your money, we just want to help it go as far as possible.

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Is the Steam Summer Sale worth it?

If you want a game and you buy it, play it for hours on end and enjoy it. then congratulations your purchase was worth it.

Think about it, if you buy Rust for £23 in this Steam Summer Sale and you love it, you spend 549.6 hours on it then never touch it again. You just spent less than 4 pence per hour on that game, and if you don’t feel the cost and it brings you enjoyment, it’s worth it.

The games that lose you money, however, are the games you buy but never play. and the Steam Summer Sale kind of encourages you to do that. This to us is where the Summer Sale isn’t worth it.

I’m going to break the rules of writing articles and switch to the first person for a second, just to expose myself. Personally, I have only played 60% of my entire Steam Library.

My Steam account is a money pit on which I have spent thousands of pounds to not play games. Sure, I’ve enjoyed it a lot, but nowhere near as much as I’ve spent.

SteamDB reckons I spend 30 pence on average per hour of play. OUCH! Just shy of 10X what I would consider worth it.

And it’s not because I am a weak-minded compulsive spender, I am, but it’s because of the way Steam forces you to buy games.

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How does Steam force you to buy games?

Back to the proper writing style. We don’t mean Gabe Newell knocks on your Steam Client window, puts a gun to its head, and tells you to spend money if you want to see your account active again.

We mean that Steam may create a false sense of urgency during these big sale events. Steam gives you undeniably massive discounts, but then gives you a 2-week window to seize them. It’s not just Steam that’s guilty of this, every game platform out there is. But what sets Steam aside is its regular discounts throughout the year.

We don’t think Steam is bad, in fact, we think Steam is the best platform for PC gamers. We just want to show you that Steam is so good it can give you the same or better discounts throughout the year, outside of sale times.

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Steam games regularly go on sale for the same price outside of sale times

If we head over to our fantastic friend SteamDB, more specifically the sale section, we can observe one major thing. SteamDB has a great color indicator that tells you all you need to know without too much analysis.

Blue discounts are sales that are new historical lows, Green discounts are discounts that are in line with the lowest they have ever been, and no color means just a discount.

We know it’s hard to read the game names, but we just want you to pay attention to the fact that there is twice as much Green as there is Blue. Possibly more.

This is the front page of SteamDB sales, meaning that these are the games SteamDB deems most worthy of showing.

The fact there are so many green discounts highlights the fact that that these games have been that cheap before, and it suggests that they’re only liable to get cheaper as they get older. With the exception of games that are already really old.

Steam games price histories

Let’s take Half-life Alyx as an example, we know this is an article and we can cherry-pick results, but this is GENERALLY the FIRST game we looked at.

Half-Life Alyx was as cheap as it is now for the first time in Nov 2022 and then went on sale three more times. Once in December, once in January, and once again for the Spring Sale. It makes sense for Valve games to frequent the sales but there are other examples of games being just as cheap outside of Steam sales events.

Resident Evil Village is a great example.

This game went on sale for exactly how much it is now, 50% off, Five separate times outside of Major Steam Sale events. Once was in the Steam Puzzle Fest, so we’ll let that one slide.

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The main attraction of the Steam Summer Sale

We understand that the main attraction of the Steam Summer Sale is understanding and knowing when items are likely to be on sale.

But you have to remember that Steam does a major Sale every three months. So if your game isn’t on sale during the time between sales, it will likely be in the next Steam Sale.

The Steam Summer sale is less about getting the best discounts, it seems to be more about having a lot of the same or similar discounts all at once.

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Do we think that the Steam Summer Sale is worth it?

Yes, if you have just a shred, an inkling, a morsel of self-control. You can use the Steam Sales to your advantage, all you have to do is no matter what you buy or how much you spend, enjoy your games. If you don’t play for less than 2 hours and refund it. That’s what the “it’s not fun” option is there for.

We love that Steam has regular sales, we just don’t want you to fall victim to the sense of urgency sales like this create, like the idiot who wrote this article.