Winter is less than a month away but there's still enough time left in the current season to squeeze in a Steam sale—and yes, that means the 2024 Steam Autumn Sale is now underway.
As always, the start of the Autumn Sale also kicks off the nominations for the 2024 Steam Awards, the annual celebration of the year's favorites across 11 categories. Nominations will be open until the end of the Autumn Sale, with voting to follow in the Steam Winter sale, which assuming the last couple decades of precedent holds up will happen in December.
There's one category change for the 2024 Steam Awards: Best Game on the Go has been replaced by the Most Innovative Gameplay Award: "The designers of this game are at the front lines of creative experimentation, bringing a fresh perspective and brain-breaking surprises. This game delighted, inspired and entertained with newness never played before."
Nominating at least one game for a Steam Award will net you a new badge—completing "other tasks," like reviewing or playing a game you've nominated, will level it up.
We'll be putting together a list of some of the best deals in the 2024 Autumn Sale once we've had a chance to browse through it—it's a big pile of games to riffle through, so it always takes a bit. In the meantime, browsing the deals yourself will score you a free daily sticker.
Speaking of free stuff and browsing games, here's a bit of free advice: The Augmented Steam browser extension will make your life a lot easier when you're looking for deals, and using Steam in general. It's "the Deus Ex of browser extensions," as PC Gamer's Jody Macgregor put it, with features including built-in price comparison, more detailed store pages, extra search filters and highlighting, a faster community market, and even an option to skip age checks. I've been using it for ages and honestly, when I have to deal with un-augmented Steam, I really feel it. (And I don't like it.)
The 2024 Steam Autumn Sale runs until December 4. Don't forget that Steam tends to struggle when the big sales first kick off, so be prepared to have a little patience until the initial rush passes.
