Valve's annual Steam Summer Sale is live

[Shawn Knight]

The big picture: Valve ahead of its Steam Summer Sale has quietly made a change that will make it harder for people to switch regions to score better deals on games. But if that doesn't apply to you, continue on because the annual sales event is now live!

The practice, referred to by some as touring, involves changing the region setting on your Steam account to take advantage of sales or lower prices that might be available to consumers in other areas. Per the Steam Database Twitter account, Valve has added a restriction that prevents users from updating their country more than once every three months.

In a further crack down on people buying games in cheaper regions, Valve added a limit on how often you can change your Steam account's country.

Country may not be updated more than once every 3 months. Purchases can be completed using a payment method from your current region.

— Steam Database (@SteamDB) June 23, 2021

It’s not a perfect solution, however, as it will no doubt be a headache for frequent travelers that genuinely do access their account and make purchases from different countries on a regular basis.

Valve’s annual Steam Summer Sale is now in full effect. As usual, there’s no shortage of discounts across virtually every genre. Highlights include 75 percent off Battlefield V Definitive Edition (yours for just $12.99), Cities: Skylines (down to $7.49) and Kerbal Space Program (now $10) as well as half off Mortal Kombat 11 (down to $29.99) and Halo: The Master Chief Collection (now only $19.99).

Are you planning to pick up anything this time around? I'm seriously on the fence about Cities Skylines as I've been watching a lot of the City Planner Plays YouTube channel lately. My outdated CPU doesn't meet the recommended hardware requirements but I think the mediocre GTX 1050 should make up for it.

The Steam Summer Sale runs through July 8.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/90191-valve-annual-steam-summer-sale-live.html

 

[stewi0001]

My machine is too dated.

 

[Gypsygib]

I'd love to buy some new games, I have about 7 games that I've wanted since last year. But my 5 year old GPU will run them at ~40-50FPS on my 1440p monitor even with lowered settings. No point ruining my one chance at a first experience with lower FPS. I've been trying to get a 3080 for months and check multiple times a day but it's always unavailable or $2000-$2400 from scalpers. I could pay that, but I'd never enjoy the card knowing I paid like over 200% the price for it.

At least when availability finally improves all the games I want now will be 50-80% cheaper and I'll always be 1-2 years behind in my "new games" catalogue so I'll never feel the need to buy a new release again. I guess I can thank miners and scalpers for that at least...

Oh, and way to screw over both gaming consumers and game devs/publishers Nvidia and AMD, miners don't buy games so there's probably close to a billion dollars in sales just excised from the industry, despite the pandemic sales growth. Well done, at least you got paid. Wouldn't be surprised if both companies had their own mining farms.

 

[amghwk]

Still have too many backlogged unplayed games and now have stopped shopping during sales at Steam unless it's at least 75% - 90% off. And, besides, Epic also have been giving freebies including AAA titles for free every week.

Games like RDR2 may take another year or 2 to reach 85% off. Till then I have other games to play and in no hurry for impulse buying. Who knows, by then, Epic might even give it away for free.

 

[AIC1Drew]

I'd love to buy some new games, I have about 7 games that I've wanted since last year. But my 5 year old GPU will run them at ~40-50FPS on my 1440p monitor even with lowered settings. No point ruining my one chance at a first experience with lower FPS. I've been trying to get a 3080 for months and check multiple times a day but it's always unavailable or $2000-$2400 from scalpers. I could pay that, but I'd never enjoy the card knowing I paid like over 200% the price for it.

At least when availability finally improves all the games I want now will be 50-80% cheaper and I'll always be 1-2 years behind in my "new games" catalogue so I'll never feel the need to buy a new release again. I guess I can thank miners and scalpers for that at least...

Oh, and way to screw over both gaming consumers and game devs/publishers Nvidia and AMD, miners don't buy games so there's probably close to a billion dollars in sales just excised from the industry, despite the pandemic sales growth. Well done, at least you got paid. Wouldn't be surprised if both companies had their own mining farms.

Just get a decent 1080p monitor for $150-200 to boost frames

 

[SirDigby]

Has to be shared every time.

 

[hahahanoobs]

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - GOTY Edition is also on sale for 50% off.
I'm gonna grab it.

 

[fluffydroid]

I'd love to buy some new games, I have about 7 games that I've wanted since last year. But my 5 year old GPU will run them at ~40-50FPS on my 1440p monitor even with lowered settings. No point ruining my one chance at a first experience with lower FPS. I've been trying to get a 3080 for months and check multiple times a day but it's always unavailable or $2000-$2400 from scalpers. I could pay that, but I'd never enjoy the card knowing I paid like over 200% the price for it.

At least when availability finally improves all the games I want now will be 50-80% cheaper and I'll always be 1-2 years behind in my "new games" catalogue so I'll never feel the need to buy a new release again. I guess I can thank miners and scalpers for that at least...

Oh, and way to screw over both gaming consumers and game devs/publishers Nvidia and AMD, miners don't buy games so there's probably close to a billion dollars in sales just excised from the industry, despite the pandemic sales growth. Well done, at least you got paid. Wouldn't be surprised if both companies had their own mining farms.

Which GPU and which games? Most games play fine and look really good when turned down from ultra to medium or high settings. Example, I loaded up Rage 2 on a 2016 laptop with 970M the other day. Using recommended settings it was getting 60 fps. Rage 2 scales down the resolution to keep fps up. This system would struggle with Cyberpunk, but most other games can be tweaked to run fine even on older gpu's.

 

[Gypsygib]

Which GPU and which games? Most games play fine and look really good when turned down from ultra to medium or high settings. Example, I loaded up Rage 2 on a 2016 laptop with 970M the other day. Using recommended settings it was getting 60 fps. Rage 2 scales down the resolution to keep fps up. This system would struggle with Cyberpunk, but most other games can be tweaked to run fine even on older gpu's.

I have a GTX1080, don't play much MP and like big budget SP story driven experiences. I'm not sure if it's my monitor or not, but I need at least around 80FPS for that smooth feeling despite GSYNC. 60 FPS looks fine on my 4K TV but anything under 1440p looks blurry and it's not adaptive sync so games must maintain 60FPS or it's tearing/constant choppiness. Monitor is 1440p as well. I guess I've become a gaming snob because if I can't play at least ~80 FPS and med to high settings, I don't want to bother until I can get better hardware. Only one chance at a first experience, rather not diminish it.

Games I'd buy today are:

Cyberpunk
Control
AC Valhalla
Horizon Zero Dawn
HL Alyx
WD Legion
RDR 2

Ideally, I'd experience Ray tracing too for the games that support it. Totally fine using DLSS.

 

[fluffydroid]

I have a GTX1080, don't play much MP and like big budget SP story driven experiences. I'm not sure if it's my monitor or not, but I need at least around 80FPS for that smooth feeling despite GSYNC. 60 FPS looks fine on my 4K TV but anything under 1440p looks blurry and it's not adaptive sync so games must maintain 60FPS or it's tearing/constant choppiness. Monitor is 1440p as well. I guess I've become a gaming snob because if I can't play at least ~80 FPS and med to high settings, I don't want to bother until I can get better hardware. Only one chance at a first experience, rather not diminish it.

Games I'd buy today are:

Cyberpunk
Control
AC Valhalla
Horizon Zero Dawn
HL Alyx
WD Legion
RDR 2

Ideally, I'd experience Ray tracing too for the games that support it. Totally fine using DLSS.

I am not sure about the others. But the Hardware Unboxed youtube channel did optimized settings videos on RDR 2. I bet you can get 80 fps at 1440p using those settings. By optimized settings it means that they think the visuals look almost as good despite big improvements in framerates.

Nvidia Geforce Experience also suggests settings to best balance fps and image quality. Not nearly as good as the video by Hardware Unboxed, IMO.

 

[Knot Schure]

Has to be shared every time.

F'kin LOVE that choon!

 

[Knot Schure]

Still have too many backlogged unplayed games and now have stopped shopping during sales at Steam unless it's at least 75% - 90% off. And, besides, Epic also have been giving freebies including AAA titles for free every week.

Games like RDR2 may take another year or 2 to reach 85% off. Till then I have other games to play and in no hurry for impulse buying. Who knows, by then, Epic might even give it away for free.

Not ONLY the uncompleted (and some seldom played games) that I have, but I'm not buying any game that doesn't launch both on PC and console at the same time.

I feel like I've been watching my brothers play RDR2 for years now.

 

[JamesBlond]

I'd love to buy some new games, I have about 7 games that I've wanted since last year. But my 5 year old GPU will run them at ~40-50FPS on my 1440p monitor even with lowered settings. No point ruining my one chance at a first experience with lower FPS. I've been trying to get a 3080 for months and check multiple times a day but it's always unavailable or $2000-$2400 from scalpers. I could pay that, but I'd never enjoy the card knowing I paid like over 200% the price for it.

At least when availability finally improves all the games I want now will be 50-80% cheaper and I'll always be 1-2 years behind in my "new games" catalogue so I'll never feel the need to buy a new release again. I guess I can thank miners and scalpers for that at least...

Oh, and way to screw over both gaming consumers and game devs/publishers Nvidia and AMD, miners don't buy games so there's probably close to a billion dollars in sales just excised from the industry, despite the pandemic sales growth. Well done, at least you got paid. Wouldn't be surprised if both companies had their own mining farms.

Buy a RTX2060, $500 and you will be able to play most games for the next 3yrs, then when all the nuclear dust settles, upgrade