What Dropped in Price in the 2026 Steam Summer Sale
Two weeks of discounts, a handful of genuine record lows, and the usual gap between what got promoted and what was worth buying.
The Steam Summer Sale ran from 25 June to 9 July, the usual two week window, and it’s over. A couple of days of distance makes it easier to sort the genuinely notable discounts from the numbers the same games have been carrying all year.
Sale prices below are US figures, which is how Steam discounts get reported. The percentages are the same everywhere.
The genuine record lows
Cyberpunk 2077 hit $17.99 in the US, its lowest ever, with equivalent lows in other regions. Given the amount of post-launch work behind it and the expansion bundled into the current edition, that was the best thing in the sale.
Red Dead Redemption 2 at 75% off, landing around $15, is close behind. Rockstar discounts on a schedule, and this was the deepest cut the game has taken.
The Witcher 3 and Dead Space both went to about 90%, deep enough that what’s left is close to noise. Dead Space is worth calling out: a 2023 remake at 90% off, when that kind of cut used to take five years to show up.
Newer titles that moved
Recent releases are usually where sales disappoint, so this is the category worth watching. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 went to 60% off, around $23.99, the best result for anything from the last eighteen months. It reviewed well, it sold well, and it still took a cut that deep considerably faster than the usual schedule would predict.
Bundles doing real work
The Metro Saga Bundle, roughly $5 for three games and their DLC, was the best value per hour in the sale by a wide margin. Metro 2039 is due later this year, so the timing wasn’t an accident. Series get discounted ahead of a new entry, and this was about as clear as that pattern gets.
The reliable back catalogue
Hades at $6.24, Besiege at $4.99, and a long tail of games sitting at or near these figures in several previous sales. Buy them if you don’t own them, but don’t wait for them to get cheaper. This is simply where they live now.
What did not drop
Same as previous years. Anything released in the last six months held at 20% or less. Publishers who don’t discount didn’t discount. And several games given prominent front page placement were carrying the same percentage they’ve had at every seasonal sale for two years. Check the price history before you trust the promotion.
What it tells you about timing
The summer sale is still the event where back catalogue titles hit their real floor. Several of the prices above were all-time lows rather than repeats, and that isn’t true of the smaller seasonal events.
The gap between a game’s launch and its first serious discount also keeps shrinking, but only for the games that sold well. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 reaching 60% inside eighteen months is a publisher confident enough in its long tail to price aggressively. A deep early discount used to signal the opposite.
The next comparable window is the autumn event, which historically sits a tier below this one, and then Black Friday, which is broader but usually shallower on PC. If something you wanted stayed expensive through this fortnight, December is the realistic next chance for it to move.