Keep your wallets safe, the time of the year when you spend all your money on games you will never play and have to explain to your family why they won't get any Christmas gifts is now here. That's right, it's this years Steam Holiday Sale.

If you haven't noticed Christmas themed achievements have started to appear in games and are most likely related to some event like the ones during previous steam sales. So getting those could be a good way to spend your time while you wait for the sale to start.

First rule of steam sales:

Don't buy anything that isn't a daily deal until the last day of the sale.

Useful sites

http://www.steamprices.com

Use this site to compare price differences between regions. This site is useful if you know someone in another region and and want to trade gifts. You will notice when you visit the site that there are two European flags (one with the number 2 in one of it's corners), that's because Europe is often separated into two regions on steam. The European regions are:

Europe 1: Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland

Europe 2: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Vatican City

The region lists are not official so not all games fit those regions.

http://www.steamgamesales.com/

This site can be used to find good deals that are not advertised on the front page. Keep in mind the first rule, although if you find an extremely cheap game or a game were savings is higher than 75% it usually won't be a daily deal.

Today's Deals

Day 14

I'm glad that this is the year I have no money for this sale because I practically have everything I could possibly want from the bazillion other Steam sales over the last few years. Saves me a lot of trouble.

Now, if I just had more money for that GoG sale...

I forgot that there might me specific achievements to get. Gonna have to try and run the games on my laptop because I left my PC at uni. I can imagine the Space Marine one hard to get on this old machine.

Yay.

Looking forward to it, not really sure what I'm going to get though. The only thing I'm sure I'm going to pick up is Deus Ex: Missing Link (If it's on sale that is...). I bought most of the other things I was interested in during the last sale D:

I look forward to purchasing the whole three games that I can actually play on my PC.

This site is a pretty useful for finding great deals that are not a daily deal (but remember to wait for eventual daily deals if the price is not ridiculously low). I will update the OP with more information (including the just mentioned site) once we know more about the sale.

Here are the items on sale I know of so far (and also how I know that the sale will start today)

Yeah, noticed a bunch of my games updating recently and a few of them suddenly appeared with new Christmas-y achievements, so it seems likely they're doing the token thing again, like we saw at Summer.

Poker Night definitely has a new one, I hope it means some kind of new content for it.

Wouldn't it be the craziest thing if one of the token prizes was a Dota 2 beta invite?

@ajamafalous: Or an Episode 3 beta invite.

@ajamafalous said:

Wouldn't it be the craziest thing if one of the token prizes was a Dota 2 beta invite?

I wouldn't put it past them. Maybe something along the lines of limited number of invites being up for purchase.

I spent a terrifying amount of money on games and a PC upgrade this year. 
 
I will only buy up to 40$ this Steam sale, and that's it.

@WinterSnowblind said:

Yeah, noticed a bunch of my games updating recently and a few of them suddenly appeared with new Christmas-y achievements, so it seems likely they're doing the token thing again, like we saw at Summer.

Poker Night definitely has a new one, I hope it means some kind of new content for it.

There is no new content for that game and it's one of the most frustrating achievements. The Achievement is called Three Wise Men and you have to get Three of a kind kings and win the hand. It's entirely based on luck.

@gike987: Really, was that always there? I wonder why it was patched then. What about the Uplink achievement for nuking Santa?

@WinterSnowblind: The achievement is new of course, but I did not find any new content in the game. The patch probably did nothing more than add some code that awards you the achievement if you get three kings.

Any chance Skyrim will go up for sale, or should I just buy it now?

A list of steam gifts (to be given away in the achievement prize draw) has been leaked. Take a look.

Rumours speculate that a good chunk of these titles will also be on sale.

@JacDG: If the steam sale mirrors years past it will start today and last for two weeks ending on the 31st Dec.

2010: Started on Monday Christmas week - 20th Dec; ended after two weeks, on a Saturday - 2nd Jan.

---

Have you got any other titles to play or are you completely game-free? I recommend you wait it out, only two weeks.

@IkariNoTekken said:

@JacDG: If the steam sale mirrors years past it will start today and lasts for two weeks ending on the 31st Dec.

2010: Started on Monday Christmas week - 20th Dec; ended after two weeks, on a Saturday - 2nd Jan.

---

Have you got any other titles to play or are you completely game-free? I recommend you wait it out, only two weeks.

I have plenty of games, Deus Ex on console, and I just bought Shogun 2: Total War and Dawn of War II, as well as Civ 5 a month ago (just got an okay PC) It's just that I start school again January 3rd, so I won't have that much time to invest in games after these next few weeks. I'll just wait, just to be sure.

@JacDG said:

Any chance Skyrim will go up for sale, or should I just buy it now?

I wouldn't expect a massive discount, but you might get 10% off. It's probably worth waiting a bit.

@JacDG said:

Any chance Skyrim will go up for sale, or should I just buy it now?

Why wouldn't you wait 6 hours to find out?

@BeachThunder said:

@JacDG said:

Any chance Skyrim will go up for sale, or should I just buy it now?

Why wouldn't you wait 6 hours to find out?

But we want to know naaoooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

My wallet is ready.

i just want gemini rue and i'm good 

It should start in 6 hours or tomorrow, right? I'm hoping the games in my wishlist are the first to go on sale :)

Any chance Skyrim will go up for sale, or should I just buy it now?

The winter achievement hunt list has leaked:

http://steamtreasurehunt.wikia.com/wiki/Winter_Objectives#Upcoming_Objectives

@gike987 said:

And always remember the first rule of steam sales: Don't buy anything that isn't a daily deal until the last day of the sale.

ALSO: When buying games you don't plan to install/play instantly, buy them as gifts.

As they are stored in your account you can activate and download them easily, but you also have the option to gift the item to someone else if you come to regret your purchase later on. Can't count how many times I've purchased games to then realise later on that I will never play them.

Save meh.

@IkariNoTekken said:

@gike987 said:

And always remember the first rule of steam sales: Don't buy anything that isn't a daily deal until the last day of the sale.

ALSO: When buying games you don't plan to install/play instantly, buy them as gifts.

As they are stored in your account you can activate and download them easily, but you also have the option to gift the item to someone else if you come to regret your purchase later on. Can't count how many times I've purchased games to then realise later on that I will never play them.

good advice, I'll remember that.

Also fuck not this time of year again urrrgh I both love and hate Steam sales.

Bring it on, Gabe. My wallet is yours for the taking.

I hope there are actually games I want to buy this sale, last two I bought very little.

Only want one thing; MoW Vietnam.

Just a quick word of advice, don't attempt the Super Meat Boy Xmas levels unless you have a good few hours on your hands:

Argh, its looks horrible but I have to try.

Oh man, i just got paid...Must not buy more games I'll never play.

There's two games I'm looking for. If I can pick them up on the cheap I'll be happy. Neither are new so I am hopeful.

@wemibelec90 said:

I'm glad that this is the year I have no money for this sale because I practically have everything I could possibly want from the bazillion other Steam sales over the last few years. Saves me a lot of trouble.

Now, if I just had more money for that GoG sale...

Damn that GoG sale. They better still have it by Tuesday. I really want that Alpha Centauri.

@Seedofpower said:

@BeachThunder said:

@JacDG said:

Any chance Skyrim will go up for sale, or should I just buy it now?

Why wouldn't you wait 6 hours to find out?

But we want to know naaoooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

I don't know how these things work, never really had a chance to participate in these crwaaaaazy sales, I assume all the daily sales aren't announced right away?

my plan is to limit purchases to trine 2, assassin's creed revelations, and maybe dlc for civilization v or some multiplayer games my friends are into. i have a huge backlog of unplayed games thanks mostly to cheap indie bundles so i have to limit it somehow! my previous limit was if it goes on sale and it’s already on my wishlist, but even that has made my list grow too fast!

@JacDG: If not today sometime this week. It is the week of Christmas, so this is when they would start to roll out all their big sales. Since a lot of the steam work games are getting achievements for the season, the community is assuming they are doing the same thing they did for the summer and have the community raffle.

I was glad to see in a later thread that the gift packs will be returning. I have...plans...

@Seedofpower: The raffle has pretty much been confirmed as this list was leaked showing all the titles available to win. There's also speculation that most of these titles will also be seen in the sales.

Oh god no... it's... it's about to begin isn't it? (thousand yard stare) My wallet cant handle this! Not now! I need that money to put gas in the gas tank to get to work and back! OH GOD WHAT AM I GOING TO DO?

I'm sure it won't be too bad. As a veteran of many a Steam sale there really isn't much left to buy that is of interest to me. The few games I would want haven't been out long enough for them to drop to the price I would be willing to pay for them. There's always one or two games that go super cheap that I just didn't know of, so this will probably be the year I top off and buy those handful of games I always put back on the virtual shelf.

@JacDG said:

@Seedofpower said:

@BeachThunder said:

@JacDG said:

Any chance Skyrim will go up for sale, or should I just buy it now?

Why wouldn't you wait 6 hours to find out?

But we want to know naaoooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

I don't know how these things work, never really had a chance to participate in these crwaaaaazy sales, I assume all the daily sales aren't announced right away?

The basic rule of a Steam sale is to never buy a game unless it's a daily deal. If by the last day of the sale a game you wanted did not come up as a daily deal then have at it, but no matter how good the sale looks wait for the daily deal because it will be even better.

I'm looking for SpaceChem to drop in price, and I'll probably pick up a few others I had no intention of buying once I've been paid.

Damn, I love the Steam sales.

Edit: This is how I discovered Alpha Protocol last year, and it gave me the best gameplaying experience I've had in the last few years.

Bottle of wine, apartment to myself, lights dimmed and snow nicely lit outside, topped with an evening of total immersion. Steam, don't fail me now!

I would love Dirt3, Deus Ex: HR, Rage, Space Marine and You-gotta-play-it: The Third to come down in price. Oh wait, I have no money. Forget all that then.

The only solace I have is that there can't possibly be that many more games for steam to sell me at this point. I owned everything I was remotely interested in last sale.

@MikkaQ said:

The only solace I have is that there can't possibly be that many more games for steam to sell me at this point. I owned everything I was remotely interested in last sale.

Same here. I do want to play RAGE though, so if it goes below $30 I'll pick it up.

Not buying anything for more than £10 and there is only one thing (NFS Hot Pursuit) that I'll buy for more than £5.

Last year, Mirror's Edge was the best thing I bought, it was such a pleasant surprise for £3 or something like that. Definitely made me more open to random games on sale.

I got €2700 from a grant this year. That money is mine, no strings attached. I can spend it in whatever I want. I'm about to be given another €2700 grant and everything university-related is covered for this year.

My body is ready.