Steam is dropping Lunar New Year sales and adding a big new Spring Sale

(Image credit: Valve)

Valve is making some changes to its seasonal Steam sales that will see Lunar New Year sales dropped, and a new, major Spring Sale event added in its place.

Steam has traditionally had major sales in summer, fall (paired with Black Friday), and winter, but spring has always been a little different. Rather than a traditional sale, the passing of winter has brought us a "Spring Cleaning Event" over the past several years, which was more of a "let's do something about your ridiculous backlog before the Summer Sale kicks off" kind of thing than a regular, seasonal sale. There was actually no spring-specific event at all this year: Instead, we had the Going Rogue event in the first week of May, and the Racing Fest in the last week.

"The addition of a Spring Sale was a popular request from our developer and publisher community," Valve said. "It will allow us to create more space between our four major seasonal sales and provide more opportunities throughout the year for developers to expand and execute their discounting calendar."

Here's the updated calendar for the next three seasonal Steam sales:

Autumn Sale: November 22-29
Winter Sale: December 22-January 5
Spring Sale: March 16-23

The Autumn and Winter Sales are right on schedule, while the Spring Sale will arrive in March, right around the time of the JRPG sale that landed earlier this year.

As for why Valve decided to drop the Lunar New Year Sale, which it launched in 2016 "to celebrate the influx of game developers and customers from territories like Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, and South Korea," the reason is simple: It's just too damn close to the big Winter Sale blowout. The 2021 Steam Winter Sale, for instance, ended on January 5; the 2022 Lunar New Year Sale followed just three weeks later, on January 27.

"We think many publishers will still opt to discount games around the Lunar New Year holiday, using the custom discount tools," Valve said. "But we suspect customers will be better served by a little bit more time between the big Steam-wide seasonal sales."

To stay up to speed on all the upcoming Steam sales that we know about, be sure to keep an eye on our running list of Steam sale dates.

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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.