Steam is swapping Lunar New Year sales for a new spring sale instead
To space out the seasonal discounts
Steam is ditching its annual Lunar New Year sale next year, opting instead for a new spring sale. That means the digital storefront will now have sales for all four seasons, and Valve have also outlined the dates for the next three major sales events.
Valve outlined the news in a post on the Steamworks blog. "The addition of a Spring Sale was a popular request from our developer and publisher community," reads the post. "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."
The first spring sale will happen next year from March 16th to March 23rd. That's three full sales away, however. First up is the autumn sale from November 22nd to 29th, and then the winter sale from December 22nd until January 5th.
The spring sale will apparently operate like all the other seasonal sales, by taking over the Steam homepage and driving visitors towards hundreds of discounted games across the platform.
Steam's Lunar New Year sale was introduced in 2016 as the storefront experienced an influx of developers and players from Asia. Lunar New Year takes place in January, however, which means there wasn't much time between it and Steam's winter sale the month before. "We think many publishers will still opt to discount games around the Lunar New Year holiday, using the custom discount tools," says Valve's post. "But we suspect customers will be better served by a little bit more time between the big Steam-wide seasonal sales."