Everything You Need To Know About Valve's 2023 Steam Summer Sale

Valve’s annual Steam Summer Sale, one of the biggest sales in PC gaming, began on Thursday, June 29 with big discounts across the whole service on both games and hardware. The sale lasts until July 13.

Probably the biggest bargain of the event is that Valve’s portable gaming PC, the Steam Deck, is part of the sale alongside its dock.

As in previous years, the Summer Sale has its own special collectible gimmick. From what to do with your free daily stickers, to which game deals are worth it, here’s everything you need to know about the Steam Summer Sale.

Get a Steam Deck for Up to 20% Off

The Steam Deck has marked a big step forward on hardware for Valve, which hasn’t always succeeded with past attempts like the Steam Controller. The portable gaming PC essentially gives PC gamers a Nintendo Switch-style console and portable hybrid, and while it’s not the first attempt at such a device, it’s garnered generally positive reviews and is certainly the most affordable and user-friendly portable PC out there.

The Steam Summer Sale is the perfect opportunity to grab one for anyone who’s still been on the fence, taking its already aggressive $400 base price and cutting it down to $359.10. You can also get a Steam Deck Docking Station for $71.20, if you want to play your games on the big screen. The official Valve Docking Station is far from the only Steam Deck dock option, but it does come with an extra charging brick and firmware updates straight from Valve.

What Are Steam Stickers and Trading Cards?

Valve’s trailer for the 2023 Steam Summer Sale highlights “free daily stickers,” and navigating to the store page brings you to a prominently displayed button to start claiming them. It’s not inherently apparent what utility stickers have in a game store app, but it’s worth remembering that Steam is also a whole UI for playing games, with a plethora of features right down to a chat system. Much like on WhatsApp and similar programs, Steam stickers can make chatting with friends a bit more exciting, but you can safely ignore them without losing out on anything.

Most of that applies to the available seasonal badges, too, which are just little bragging rights tokens you can stick on your profile. Trading cards, however, actually have some utility to them that’s worth keeping in mind.

Like with stickers, you can get a free Steam Summer Sale themed trading card per day, which gives you a cute little piece of artwork to admire, and more importantly, sell. It’s an oft-forgotten feature, but Steam generally gives you a few free trading cards with every game you boot up, and there’s a whole in-app reselling market that can net you anywhere from a few cents to a few bucks for each. The funds only go to your Steam Wallet, but diligent playing of the trading card market could net you a few dollars off your next game purchase. You can browse and sell your trading cards by opening the Steam app or website, clicking on your Username, and then picking “Inventory” from the drop-down menu.

How to find the best Steam Summer Sale game deals

If you’ve already got a Steam Deck, the next thing you’ll probably want to do during the Steam Summer Sale is buy some games. Steam’s interface isn’t the easiest to navigate, so here’s a few tips for how to find the best sales for you.

First, make a wishlist. This is something you’ll want to have done before the sale, but now’s a good time to start if you haven’t already. Like on most other e-tailers, Steam lets you add a game to a wishlist right from its store page rather than buy it. This will let you easily keep track of which games you want and share that list with friends, but more importantly for our purposes, it will also ensure Steam emails you every time an item on your wishlist is on sale. Items on your wishlist will also display any applicable sales in bright green text right from the wishlist page. To access your wishlist, simply open the Steam website or app, click on “Store,” and then pick “Wishlist” from the drop-down menu.

Second, check the top sellers. If you scroll down to the bottom of the Steam Store page, you’ll see a list of the most popular purchases among your fellow gamers. This isn’t always helpful, as it’s often skewed by recent releases and isn’t personalized at all, but it’s a great way to keep track of any obvious deals that you might have missed, like the Steam Deck sale.

On that note, Valve tends to run a number of similar banners across the store homepage such as “Great Deals” and “Games Under $10.” These can also be helpful, although they're largely promotional and won’t necessarily be tied to your tastes. The site will try to populate the upper portion of your Store page with picks tailored to you, but the accuracy can be hit-and-miss.

A better way to find deals that gel with you is to search by publisher. Every game on Steam has its developer and publisher listed alongside it, and clicking on either is a great way to find sales on similar games. Steam will even occasionally run sales exclusive to certain publishers, so it’s a good idea to keep track of who makes the games you like and occasionally check their Steam pages.

You can also search by genre, and Steam will even try to populate your store page with games from the genres you tend to play most often. Still, searching by publisher is going to give you a narrower and more streamlined list of results.