Steam Summer Sale 2020: confirmed start and end dates and best gaming deals to look out for - from Doom Eternal to Half-Life: Alyx and Red Dead Redemption 2

The Steam Summer Sale is one of the biggest events of the gaming calendar, and annually gets PC gamers excited at the prospect of big discounts on some of the latest blockbuster games.

Steam is a digital distribution platform for video games on PC.

Here’s everything you need to know about this year’s sale:

When is the Steam Summer Sale 2020?

The dates of the sale aren’t usually confirmed by Valve – the development company that runs Steam – directly.

Instead, Valve send them out to developers to prepare them for the sale, and to get any games they might want to discount into shape.

That means that dates inevitably leak; with so many behind-the-scenes folk in the know, they’re bound to get out somewhere.

A developer for SteamDB – which gives insight into the applications and packages that Steam has in its database – tweeted that "Chinese sources” wre saying the Steam summer sale starts on 25 June.

Djundik noted that his sources are "generally trustworthy, but not fully confirmed" before tweeting, "Confirmed now, [June] 25 to [July] 9" a few hours later.

Those dates are seemingly confirmed now, with the Steam Summer Sale in full swing.

What deals will be included?

In recent years, some surprisingly big and recently released titles have seen their prices cut.

Just a few days in to 2020’s sale, and we’ve already seen some exceptional deal from the likes of Doom Eternal, Half-Life: Alyx and Red Dead Redemption 2.

Deals update and refresh on a regular basis too, so while a game you’ve got your eye on might not be on sale now, it may be in a few days’ time.

Don’t think games released too recently will see a sharp discount though; it’s unlikely we'll see deals from games like Disintegration and SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom - Rehydrated – those games will have launched just too recently.