The Steam Summer Sale has started

The annual Steam Summer Sale has just started and gamers can once again buy virtual games, apps, and even real hardware for a discounted price.

While I'm personally not that excited anymore about new Steam sales, as Valve removed much of the excitement from them by doing away with Flash sales, user voting on special deals and such, it may still be of interest to Steam users who are looking to pick up discounted games and other things.

As far as Steam sales go, there is not really much that one can say about the sale that has not been said before: thousands of games have been discounted and you can save even more by buying entire game collections. The sale ends on July 5th, 2018 and its official name is the Intergalactic Summer Sale. You can earn Summer Sale cards and sell or buy them on the Store.

Valve added a game to the sale called Saliens which you can play to enter giveaways for certain games. Just select planets

Not all games are discounted as publishers don't have to participate in the sale. New games are not discounted by much usually while older -- read month old -- games are often discounted quite a bit.

Games are available for the same discount throughout the sale which means that there is no hurry to buy them on day one. It is usually the case that the Store becomes unresponsive in the first few hours after the sale starts; it is best, usually, to just sit it out and start browsing what is on offer after the first storm calms down. You may also notice that some discounts are not shown right away and that it may take an hour or so before all games show the discounted price.

Since you may not want to wade through all the offers, I'd like to present to you a list of 7 games that you may want to check out.

• Gabriel Knight Sins of the Father 20th Anniversary Edition for €4.99 -- Great remake of an awesome adventure game.
• Party Hard for €4.38 -- A -- very -- violent strategy game in which you try to kill all party goers.
• Playerunknown's Battleground is available for €19.99 -- While it is not my type of game, anyone who has not bough it yet may do so now.
• Portal Bundle for €1.86 -- If you have not played Portal 1 or 2 yet do it right now, it is an excellent game.
• Sid Meier's Civilization V: Complete for €11.26 -- Instead of buying Civ VI which is not all that good in my opinion, grab Civ 5 complete with everything instead.
• Tyranny for  €14.27 -- A roleplaying game in the style of Baldurs Gate and more recent Obsidian Entertainment RPGs.
• Where the Water Tastes Like Wine for €12.99 -- Telltale adventure game that is all about the stories it tells.

Hardware-wise, you can snag a Steam link for just €2.75 from Valve which is quite the bargain considering the device's regular price of €54.99. Steam Controller too is discounted by 33% but still costs €36.84.

Steam Store is down right now, we will update as soon as it is back up.