Steam Summer Sale 2016 starts today! Here’s how to get the best deals out of the sale

A year ago, we offered tips on how to save big when the almighty Gaben accepts the sacrifices from his loyal subjects and offers huge sales across Steam. Unfortunately, the previous methods on how to save the most money and get the most games will no longer work, Steam has changed it method with their sales.

In previous years, Steam sales were filled with various meta sales within the big sale: daily deals, flash sales, and community choice deals. Now, there are only two types of deals: store-wide discounts on games that haven't released within the last six months and "Highlighted Deals" that target any game and offer even more savings.

The question is, with a more simplified sale process and tons of sales chasing you down… How can you save the most money with less sales?

Easy!

Look at every single game you want to own and put it on your wishlist. When the Steam sale goes live, you might see some of those games get discounted, but that's not the time to act. You must play the waiting game. Without all the extra sales, once your game of choice is discounted it will stay that way throughout the entirety of the sale.

The trick is to wait and see if your game gets puts on the Highlighted Deals for even more savings!

A good rule of thumb to follow is, if it's on sale at 75%… it ain't gettin' any cheaper.

If you've been itching to get into an entire game publisher's library, there's something you can do. Throughout the sale, you can grab game bundles from a publisher (like Activision) that will be almost ridiculously cheap. The benefit of bundles is that your game of choice could be available at its cheapest price in a bundle.

The issue with the bundles is that you have no control over which games are included, which could force you to be purchasing a bunch of games you don't want.

Protip: If you feel used and abused after the sale, you've probably done something right. Remember, if your backlog is so long you forget which games you already owned, you won (or Valve wins… I'm not sure anymore).

Update: Day One Sales