Typically, the summer months are some of the worst for gamers. There are only two events that bring any sort of relief to the annual summer gaming drought: E3 and Valve's Steam Summer Sale.
That being said, while the dates for each E3 are announced months in advance, Valve is typically a bit more tight-lipped when talking about the Steam Summer Sale. In fact, more often than not, Valve never even officially announces when the sale is starting — usually, the Steam front page is quietly updated and the sale spreads through word of mouth.
This year is a little different, however: thanks to a tweet sent out by the PayPal UK Twitter account, gamers know now that Valve's annual Summer Sale is right around the corner.
According to the tweet, the Steam Summer Sale will kick off on June 23. Normally, it'd be best to take something like this with a grain of salt, but PayPal's update actually confirms a leak that popped up on Reddit last week. The Reddit leak also mentioned June 23 as a start date — so, at this point, it's looking like PC players only have a week left to wait before one of the biggest gaming sales of the year officially begins.
It’s official: the @Steam_games sale starts 23rd June. https://t.co/6EdbWFScCW
— PayPal UK (@PayPalUK) June 16, 2016
Of course, gamers can expect the usual plethora of discounted games, but Valve actually has a bigger stake in this year's sale than most others. First and foremost, Valve has recently doubled-down on its unique Steam controller — and it wouldn't be all that surprising to see a big discount on the publisher's hardware. Whether or not that'll actually amount to anything remains to be seen ... but considering how poorly-received the Steam Controller has been, a discount may be too little, too late.
There's also the matter of the HTC Vive. As the VR headset is produced in part by Valve, some are expecting to see the Vive's first discount during the sale. On one hand, it's probably too early to hope for a significant discount — then again, a discount could help the Vive pull ahead of its less-expensive competition. At $800, the Vive is anything but cheap ... but can Valve really afford to cut the headset's price, even temporarily?
Either way, it won't be much longer before gamers know for sure one way or the other: the annual Steam Summer Sale is set to kick off on June 23, and will last through July 4.
