Hold onto your wallets, boys and girls. The annual Steam summer sale is here.
While the official first day of 2014’s summer solstice is still a couple days away, the summer of gaming fun is now underway as Steam ushers in nearly two weeks of daily deals, flash sales, and community’s choice votes. This summer, Valve has also added a cool little meta game to the sale in the form of a team-based adventure the entire Steam community can get involved in.
Each day during the sale users can participate in the Summer Adventure by randomly joining a team — Blue, Green, Pink, Purple, or Red — and then helping that team earn the most points by crafting trading card badges, including the new set made just for the summer sale. At the end of each day, 30 contributing members from the winning team will be awarded three free games from their wishlist. All members of the winning team who contributed points will receive two bonus summer sale cards, while participating members from all losing teams will receive one free card. Crafting the Summer Adventure Badge will come with its own rewards, including in-game items, emoticons, profile backgrounds and the possibility of a Team Token which allows the user to switch teams.
Read the full FAQ and join in on the fun yourself at store.steampowered.com/promotion/summer2014faq.
As for the sale itself, here’s a list of the day one offers:
Daily Deals:
– Day Z 15% off
– Democracy 3 66% off
– Divinity: Original Sin 20% off
– Dead Rising 3 Prepurchase 25% off
– Far Cry 3 75% off
– Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion 80% off
– The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition 80% off
– XCOM: Enemy Unknown 67% off
– Don’t Starve 75% off
Flash Sales:
– Dead Island: Riptide 75% off
– DmC: Devil May Cry 75% off
– Mirror’s Edge 75% off
– Hotline Miami 85% off
Community’s Choice:
– Vote between two sets of deals, including Torchlight II 75% off, South Park: The Stick of Truth 33% off, 7 Days to Die 45% off, and The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing II 33% off; or Trine 2 Complete Store 90% off, Fez 75% off, Dust: An Elysian Tail 80% off, and Valdis Story: Abyssal City 75% off.
Matt Litten is the full-time editor and owner of VGBlogger.com. He is responsible for maintaining the day to day operation of the site, editing all staff content before it is published, and contributing regular news, reviews, previews and other articles.
Matt landed his first gig in the video game review business writing for the now-defunct website BonusStage.com. After the sad and untimely close of BonusStage, the former staff went on to found VGBlogger.com. After a short stint as US Site Manager for AceGamez, Matt assumed full ownership over VGBlogger, and to this day he is dedicated to making it one of the top video game blogs in all the blogosphere.
Matt is a fair-minded reviewer and lover of games of all platforms and types, big or small, hyped or niche, big-budget or indie. But that doesn't mean he will let poor games slide without a good thrashing when necessary! 
