Steampowered.com, 2019 Steam Summer Sale, Day 2. — AFP Relaxnews
Navigate the 2019 Steam Summer Sale with help from Steam250, IsThereAnyDeal, SteamDB and GG Deals, to help find the best games, prices, and bargains both on the computer gaming store's site and elsewhere.
The 2019 Steam Summer Sale is an opportunity to snap up PC, Mac and Linux games at deep discount prices. With prices static throughout, there's plenty of time to make decisions until the sale ends on July 9; Steam also rotates its front-page promotions over the course of the two-week period.
Yet for those who want to dig a little deeper, take a chance on some lesser-known gems, compare prices with other stores, or look at previous price history as a guide to the next sale's possible rates, four unofficial sites are worth keeping in mind.
Steam250 provides various rankings based on an official user review system implemented in 2013.
As well as the top 250 best Steam games of all time, per player reviews, lists can be filtered by calendar year or rolling week, month, and quarter, and year; by genre; by price, lack of price, or sale discount; and via a Hidden Gems list that filters review scores through a popularity metric.
IsThereAnyDeal, GG.Deals, and SteamDB offer price timelines for individual games as well, so that users can see whether a game has been on sale for less in the past, and weigh up their desire to buy it now accordingly.
GG.Deals has a number of other search filters available and can query its databank of Steam user wishlists to determine popularity, or rank its lists in terms of several kinds of review scores: Steam user reviews, Metacritic press review scores, and Metacritic user scores.
As well as having its own overview of sale prices and bundle deals, IsThereAnyDeal runs the popular and comprehensive browser extension Augmented Steam, previously known as Enhanced Steam before its original author retired from the project.
Augmented Steam works with Chrome and Firefox, inserting several new or expanded elements into the Steam store website (though not the proprietary Steam client apps).
On a game's page, it will show the lowest historical price as well as the lowest current price from other stores, differences in regional pricing, external links including those to the PCGamingWiki troubleshooting site and review aggregator OpenCritic, as well as community-sourced estimates for game length, player counts, and hardware performance, plus additional search filters and highlighted results.
SteamDB is another useful bargain hunter's tool for tracking and filtering sales, evaluating the relative value of games sold individually or in publisher or franchise bundles, and viewing historical price changes.
It's particularly good at showing at-a-glance regional pricing.
Like IsThereAnyDeal, Steam DB also has a browser extension (Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Edge) which will make connections between the SteamDB site and a user's Steam library and wishlist, offering a raft of optional enhancements on the Steam site itself. – AFP Relaxnews
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