Christmas comes but once a year, and giant Steam sales come but twice. Steam’s 2014 holiday sale has just kicked off, promising loads of deeply discounted PC games for Valve’s legion of keyboard warriors. The sale runs until January 2, with discounts across the service’s catalog and special deals advertised daily.
The first day of special offers includes discounts on titles like Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, Dark Souls II, and the ever-popular Euro Truck Simulator 2. Players can vote for Community Choice sales once a day, as well. As Community Choice sales previously occurred every eight hours, it appears that Lord Newell decided to grant us less time spent refreshing the Steam home page this year and more time to play games, or even to spend with friends and family.
As usual, there’s a new set of holiday trading cards available. They can be earned by purchasing games or voting for the Community Choice sale, which appears to grant one card per vote. Collecting all the cards allows you to craft the holiday badge, earning Steam experience, profile backgrounds, and emoticons. Alternately, the cards can be sold or traded on the Community Market.
Steam has also introduced a new system that allows players to recycle unwanted inventory items (badges, backgrounds, and emoticons) for “gems” instead of selling them on the market. Gems can be used to buy card booster packs for specific games, in what we assume is an attempt to inflate the value of various items in the Community Market. Of course, you can safely ignore all this community stuff and just take advantage of the sale to buy cheap games.