Update: The Steam summer sale has begun!

By Brad Jones June 23, 2016

steam summer sale 2016 approaching steamcontroller — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Update 6/23/16 10:00 AM: As detailed in the post below, the Steam Summer Sale is officially underway!

Every year, Valve unleashes a summer sale on its Steam storefront that’s destined to plunge scores of its users into financial instability thanks to the wide array of deals on offer — and every year, PayPal leaks the start date ahead of time. Now, a promotional email from the company has ripped the lid off Valve’s plans for 2016.

This year’s Steam summer sale will get underway on June 23, as per an email distributed to PayPal account holders over the past week. “Now you know when it’s going to happen,” reads the accompanying message “you can get ready for the savings.”

While in previous years PayPal has let the cat out of the bag without Valve’s say-so, it seems that the company was given the go-ahead this time around. The email makes reference to the exclusive nature of the reveal, and a tweet promoting the announcement tagged the official Steam account, according to a report from Tech Spot.

This news seems to confirm previous reports that the 2016 summer sale would run from June 23 to July 4. In May, a developer using the handle MrFreemanBBQ posted a screenshot of communication from Valve referencing those dates — along with a message warning recipients to keep this “confidential” information secret — to the Steam subreddit.

Digital downloads have long been at the core of the Steam platform and its summer sales, but this year we might see Valve push its hardware with some deep discounts. Recent sales figures for the Steam Controller suggest that both the peripheral and the company’s Steam Machines are struggling to find an audience.

However, the summer sale isn’t just about price cuts — Valve often adds an extra element to draw consumers in, like the monster game that was rolled out in support of last year’s iteration. We’ll find out what the company has planned for 2016 when the sale gets underway on June 23.

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Brad is an English-born writer currently splitting his time between Edinburgh and Pennsylvania. You can find him on Twitter…

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