Reminder: Steam Holiday Sale begins today

***Update***

The 2014 Steam Holiday Sale is live. Check out the day-one discounts here.

***Original***

Get those credit cards and digital wallets ready, folks. The annual Steam Holiday/Winter Sale begins today. At least, that's what we've been led to believe based on leaks and event a brief line by Valve themselves. 

Never one to make a big, flashy announcement for their annual sale, Valve confirmed the today's start date via a line tucked away at the bottom of the Steam Holiday Auction page.

"The Auction runs Dec 15 @ 10:45am to Dec 18 @ 1:00pm when the Holiday Sale begins," Valve says on the page of its unique Steam event.

So while the Auction comes to a close today at 1:00pm Eastern Time, prepare to be hit with an onslaught of wallet-crushing sales. We don't know what games will be discounted yet, as that tends to be a surprise, but expect the typical daily deals and flash sales. Also expect some kind of mini-game to go along with the sale and something involving cards. In fact, Valve recently added their Holiday 2014 profile badge to the Steam market, indicating that this year's sale will continue the tradition of buying games, playing games, collecting cards, crafting badges (or selling cards), and so on.

The Steam Holiday Sale is expected to begin today at 1:00pm Eastern Time (maybe a little after since the servers tend to crash exactly at 1pm) and run through Friday, January 2, 2015. The last day typically sees the most popular games return for one final sale in case you missed them throughout the week.