Surprise! Steam's Chinese New Year 2023 sale is live

Steam Chinese New Year Sale 2023
(Image credit: Valve)

Valve announced in September 2022 that it was dropping the Lunar New Year sale and adding a big new Spring Sale in its place, giving it one major sale for each of the four seasons. But it's not leaving gamers hanging completely in the January doldrums: The Lunar New Year Sale is gone, but the Chinese New Year Sale is now underway.

The Chinese New Year Sale focuses, as you'd expect, on game developers and publishers in China. It's a smaller scale event than the previous Lunar New Year sales, but there's still a lot of good stuff to look through. A few thoughts to get the ball rolling:

Demos for a number of the games in the sale, including Sword and Fairy 7, FIST, and Ballads of Hongye, are also available, so you can get a feel for what they're all about before you commit any money.

The Steam Chinese New Year Sale page also very conveniently includes links to separate, publisher-specific sales: The Xbox Game Studios Lunar Sale, the Bandai Namco Entertainment Lunar New Year Sale, the Sega Lunar Sale, the 505 Games Lunar New Year Sale, and the more indie-focused Curve Games East Meets West Game Fest.

For the full rundown of upcoming Steam sales (the ones we know about, anyway), drop into our running list of Steam sale dates

Andy Chalk

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.