The Steam Spring Cleaning Event has begun

The Steam Spring Cleaning Event kicked off today, and as the name suggests it's not actually a sale. Instead, it's a way to catch up with your backlog, and earn a new Steam badge in the process, by completing daily tasks with games you already own. 

Part one is to earn "trophies" in five different categories: Play a game you've got more than two hours into "but haven't played in awhile," for instance, or play the very first game added to your account, excluding Half-Life 2 if you go back that far. The games are selected for you and are linked from the Spring Cleaning page, so it's easy to pick a relevant game. 

Once you've got all five trophies in place, the badge is yours, at which point you can get to work completing daily tasks—playing games selected from your library by Valve, basically—in order to level it up. 

A number of games have been made free-to-play for the weekend too, including Dead by Daylight, Endless Space 2, Grim Dawn, Don't Starve Together, Black Desert Online Remastered, Assetto Corsa, and Left 4 Dead 2. That's a nice bonus for people who don't really care about Steam badges but wouldn't mind having something new to try this weekend. 

The Steam Spring Cleaning Event runs until 10 am PT on May 28. 

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.