Steam's first-ever Black Friday sale makes a surprise appearance to fill the gap left by the Steam Autumn Sale

The 2025 Steam Autumn Sale popped a couple months earlier than usual for the simple reason that in every previous year, it fell too damn close to the Steam Winter Sale. The two big seasonal sales were separated, literally, by just a couple weeks: The 2024 Autumn Sale wrapped up on December 4, and the Winter Sale kicked off on December 15. That's just too much sale all mush into one month.

But if you thought that the shifted Autumn Sale meant no discounts on Steam in late November, boy, were you ever wrong. Because for the first time ever, Valve has capitulated to the gods of e-commerce and is holding its very own Black Friday Sale.

Unlike many online retailers, who view Black Friday as one of the most important sell stuff holidays* of the year, Steam's Black Friday Sale is a relatively small affair compared to the seasonal heavyweights: It runs for just one week, and there are no attendant Points Shop freebies or trading cards to earn for hammering through your discovery queue.

Which is not to say there aren't some sweet deals on offer, because there are. One obvious choice is Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, which is 60% off its regular price—that's $24/£22/€24, the lowest it's ever been on Steam.

Battlefield 6 is also on sale, for $59.49/£51/€59.49, which is just 15% off the regular price but still notable given that it's one of the biggest games of 2025 and has only been out for a little more than a month. Continuing in the vein of popular new games, Dying Light: The Beast is 20% off—that's $48/£40/€48—and Arc Raiders, one of the best games you can buy for $40, well, it's still one of the best games you can buy for $40. Sorry. Great deal even at regular price though.

At the opposite end of the pricing spectrum, which is where I like to play, I am going to once again recommend First Encounter Assault Recon, the game we all know as FEAR, on sale for just $2/£1.39/€1.79, which includes the base game and the Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate DLCs, both of which I would urge you to ignore.

(If you want to know why I'm still banging my shoe on the buy FEAR and actually play it table, here's PC Gamer's vid-maestro Scott Tanner laying out the facts: 20 years later, it's still one of the best to ever do it. There's even a recent fan patch that fixes it up nice for modern PCs.)

You can also snag a deal on the base model Steam Deck: The 256GB LCD unit is 20% off during the Black Friday sale, dropping it to $319/£279, which hardware writer Jeremy Laird said in September makes it "a stellar deal for entry-level portable PC gaming."

So there you have it: New games, old games, and things on which to play your games, all dolled up in a festively horrific apotheosis of capitalism that we just can't say no to because holy cow, these prices will not be beat! Until the Steam Winter Sale, anyway.

The first-ever Steam Black Friday Sale runs until December 1. The Steam Winter Sale 2025, since we're talking about it, kicks off on December 18.