In January, Valve rolled out a major overhaul to the way Steam handles game soundtracks (opens in new tab). Previously, soundtracks were treated as DLC, which was a real hassle: They couldn't be purchased separately from the games they belonged to, and if you wanted to download the soundtrack you'd have to install the game first.
The update in early January changed all that by adding a new "soundtrack" category to Steam, enabling users to purchase, download, and manage their game music entirely independently of their games. It wasn't perfect—existing soundtracks would have to be manually converted to the new system by developers, so some old favorites were bound to be missed—but it's a big improvement over the old system.
To celebrate the big move, Valve kicked off a Soundtrack Sale today (opens in new tab), with deals on a wide range of the more than 900 soundtracks currently available in the new category. There's a lot of really good stuff marked down, but here are a few ideas to get you started.
- Dota 2 (opens in new tab) - $7.50/£5/€6 – (25 percent off)
- Planescape: Torment Enhanced Edition (opens in new tab) - $5/£3.50/€4 (50 percent off, and one of my all-time favorites)
- Dead Cells (opens in new tab) - $2.50/£2/€2.50 (50 percent off)
- Enter the Gungeon (opens in new tab) - $3.50/£2.50/€3.50 (50 percent off)
- Bastion (opens in new tab) - $2.50/£2/€2 (75 percent off)
- Far: Lone Sails (opens in new tab) - $2.50/£2/€2 (50 percent off)
- What Remains of Edith Finch (opens in new tab) - $4/£3/€4 (25 percent off)
- Devil May Cry 5 (opens in new tab) - $16/£13/€16 (20 percent off)
It's not really part of the sale, but in case you weren't aware (as I wasn't until I started looking into all this), soundtracks for a bunch of Valve's games—Half-Life (opens in new tab), Half-Life 2 (opens in new tab), HL2 Ep1 (opens in new tab), HL2 Ep2 (opens in new tab), Portal (opens in new tab), and Portal 2 (opens in new tab)—are free for the taking.
The Steam Soundtrack Sale runs until 10 am PT/1 pm ET on February 14.
