The Steam Summer Sale has begun, and it's a little weird this year

pcgamer.com:

Steam sale dates(opens in new tab) are no longer the closely guarded secrets they used to be, but the arrival of the Steam Summer Sale(opens in new tab) still represents one of the biggest days on the PC gaming calendar. The 2022 event, which is now officially underway, is no different: There's the usual mountain of discounts on a huge range of games, plus Summer Sale trading cards, badges, something called Clorthax, and—for the first time ever, I believe—an official Steam Summer Sale trailer.

The Summer Sale is big, and as always we're going to dig through the deals to come up with some suggestions about where you might want to throw your money, based on where we might want to throw our money. To get things rolling quickly, though, here's the full rundown of every game that appeared in the Summer Sale trailer, in case something caught your eye and you want a closer look:

If you've been a Steam user for any length of time, you'll likely know that an actual, official trailer from Valve promoting the event is extremely unusual—unprecedented, even. Yet the video above isn't the only one to roll out of Steam HQ to mark this year's virtual bazaar of bargoons. There's also a handy tutorial starring Sir Smashes-A-Lot that explains Steam trading cards in detail: How they work, what they do, and why they might be worth your time to play around with.

Valve promised that no «sellable functioning hardware» was damaged during the making of the video, if you're concerned about such things.

The Steam Summer Sale is live now and runs until 10 am PT/1 pm ET on July 7. And since Valve is leaning so heavily into videos for this one, let us take a moment to remember this absolute work of genius from 2016, courtesy of ClintBeastwood. Are you