Steam Summer Sale 2026 arrives: 10 hot video game deals

If you have a gaming PC, a Steam Deck, or even a brand new Steam Machine, you can currently get a whole lot of great video games for almost no money right now.

That’s because the annual Steam Summer Sale kicked off on Thursday, with offers lasting until July 9. That means you have a couple of weeks to get as much as 80 percent off on some of the best games ever made. But if you don’t feel like combing through the entire Steam interface to find deals, I’ve curated 10 of them that I think are definitely worth checking out. These range from mainstream hits to smaller indie games across a variety of genres, but one constant is that I’ve played and adore all of them.

Here are 10 of the best deals in the Steam Summer Sale.

The Witcher III: Wild Hunt – Complete Edition

• List Price: $49.99

• Sale Price: $9.99

There’s a decent chance you already own The Witcher III, given that it’s sold 65 million units since its launch in 2015. But if you don’t, there really is no better time than now to hop on the bandwagon.

This is, without sugarcoating it, one of the best RPGs ever made, and you can enjoy it just fine even if you never played its two predecessors or read any of the Polish fantasy novels on which the game series is based. It combines some of the best open-world quest design ever with an emotional, mature story that’s more about being a good father than saving the world (though there’s some of that, too). The Complete Edition comes with both existing expansion packs, which are 100 percent worth playing, and there’s actually a third expansion coming out in 2027 to look forward to, as well.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor

Cal Kestis is also a cool dude.
Credit: Respawn/Steam

• List Price: $69.99

• Sale Price: $13.99

There is a litany of Star Wars games available in the Steam sale, but Jedi: Survivor is probably the best deal here, for my money. The sequel to 2019’s Jedi: Fallen Order follows surprisingly endearing protagonist Cal Kestis and friends as they search for safe haven from the evil Galactic Empire. It’s got great combat, compelling level design, and honestly one of the best stories in any Disney-era Star Wars production. For $13.99, this is a must-buy, as far as I’m concerned.

Titanfall 2

One of the best shooter campaigns ever.
Credit: Respawn/Steam

• List Price: $29.99

• Sale Price: $4.49

Titanfall 2 has been one of the most perpetually dirt-cheap games on digital storefronts for the past decade, but somehow, there are still people who have never played it. Don’t be one of them.

Put simply, this is one of the greatest first-person shooter single-player campaigns ever made. Every moment of it oozes with creativity and excitement, making the best out of extremely fun shooting and traversal mechanics in every mission. You should seriously just block out an entire Saturday afternoon and play it in one sitting.

Burnout Paradise Remastered

Racing games don’t get much better than this.
Credit: Criterion/Steam

• List Price: $19.99

• Sale Price: $3.99

Burnout Paradise has a real argument as being one of the four or five best games of the entire Xbox 360/PS3 era, and it’s held up beautifully. The remastered version includes all online modes, as well as all of the DLC that was made for the original game. Paradise redefined what an open-world racing game could be, years before games like Forza Horizon carried the torch for the genre. It’s simply a lot of fun and very easy to pick up and play in short bursts or long sessions.

Risk of Rain 2

One of the best co-op roguelikes out there.
Credit: Hopoo/Steam

• List Price: $24.99

• Sale Price: $8.24

Risk of Rain 2 is a shooter roguelike that can be enjoyed solo, but is best played with up to three friends in co-op fashion. You choose from one of several characters and run around procedurally generated levels killing enemies and collecting a wide variety of stacking upgrades, all while contending with a mechanic that increases enemy difficulty the more time elapses. It can get extremely challenging, but also very rewarding, especially if you manage to make a super broken build that basically plays the game by itself.

Stardew Valley

Cozy.
Credit: ConcernedApe/Steam

• List Price: $14.99

• Sale Price: $8.99

One of the biggest breakout indie hits of the last decade, Stardew Valley is still maybe the very best farming/life sim game in a market full of them. Filled to the brim with charming characters, great music, and a large variety of ways to spend your precious time (be it in solo play or multiplayer), it’s shockingly easy to lose dozens of hours to this game without even thinking about it. It’s also got a vibrant mod scene on PC, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Trails in the Sky: 1st Chapter

Some of the best RPG combat around.
Credit: Falcom/Steam

• List Price: $59.99

• Sale Price: $29.99

Trails in the Sky: 1st Chapter made it onto Mashable’s best games of 2025 list because I made sure it did, and I’m going to evangelize it here, too, especially now that it’s half off. It’s a spiffy new remake of the first game in the long and storied Trails series of Japanese RPGs. There are 13 games in total, with more to come, and all of them are part of a big, sprawling, interconnected story with hundreds of characters spread across a huge, lore-rich continent.

But you don’t need to worry too much about that with this game, since it’s the first one. It eases you into the setting beautifully and will leave you very excited for the remake of the second game in the series, due out this September. The combat is also incredibly fun. One word of warning, though: You need a healthy tolerance for anime to enjoy this series.

Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana

I can hear this screenshot.
Credit: Falcom/Steam

• List Price: $39.99

• Sale Price: $19.99

Ignore the roman numerals in title for this game. Yes, it’s the eighth entry in the long-running Ys series, but it’s also a perfect entry point for newcomers with minimal narrative connection to any other entries.

Do you like running around a vibrant, colorful world while hitting monsters with a sword and listening to some of the most energetic, catchy music in video game history? Do you like RPGs where you don’t spend a lot of time in menus and every system fits together cleanly to produce a super satisfying experience? Even if you don’t think you like those things, this is really one of the most newcomer-friendly (and also best) RPGs ever made.

Hotline Miami

I can also hear this screenshot.
Credit: Dennaton/Steam

• List Price: $9.99

• Sale Price: $0.99

Once a pillar of trendy indie game success, Hotline Miami‘s zeitgeist nonetheless ended many years ago. Still, for less than a dollar, you really have no choice but to at least try it out, especially if you missed it in 2012. Hotline Miami is a super fast and twitchy top-down action game filled with pixelated hyper-violence and one of the best video game soundtracks ever. It’s like playing through a drug-fueled murder haze, but, you know, a fun one. It’s really good, I swear.

American Truck Simulator

Sometimes this country is beautiful.
Credit: SCS Software/Steam

• List Price: $19.99

• Sale Price: $4.99

American Truck Simulator is, indeed, an in-depth simulation of long-haul trucking in the United States. If you want to customize every part of your rig, you can do that. But if you just want to vibe out and listen to internet radio country music stations while driving across Kansas (do not drive across Kansas, it’s so boring), you can also do that. It’s best played on a racing wheel accessory, but a controller or even keyboard and mouse will do the job, too.

As a bonus, developer SCS Software has developed literally dozens of expansions to add new states to the game over the years. You can get just the base game for $4.99, but if you want to spend as much as $43.85, you can get a bundle that includes everything.