2020’s Steam Autumn Sale is Now Live

It seems the Steam sale-predicting wizards at SteamDB have been proven right again. You might recall that I recently reported upon their leak of the dates for this year’s Halloween Sale, Autumn Sale, and Winter Sale. They claimed that 2020’s Autumn Sale would start yesterday morning at 10am PT. Lo and behold, the sale in question is now at hand. This year’s round of autumnal discounts will stick around until the morning of Tuesday, December 1st, 2020.

Aside from all the wondrous discounts on games (which I’ll get to in a moment), another apparently exciting feature of this year’s Autumn Sale is the fact that nominations for 2020’s Steam Awards are now being accepted. From now until the end of the Autumn Sale, Steam users can nominate any game released this year for a variety of potential accolades.

These awards are mostly the standard fare such as the obligatory Game of the Year Award, VR Game of the Year Award, Best Game You Suck At Award, and my personal favorite, the newly-added Sit Back and Relax Award. A selection of games nominated during this year’s Autumn Sale will be shortened into a list of finalists during the Winter Sale. Once that sale begins, players will be able to vote on their favorites in each category during the Winter Sale’s two-week duration. Winning titles will ultimately be announced on January 3rd, 2021, which happens to be two days before the conclusion of the Winter Sale.

Moving on, let’s talk for a short while about the main attraction of the next seven days, the sale itself. Some among our readers might know that I’ve made something of a habit of publishing lists of my personal game recommendations during each year’s Summer and Winter Sales. Since the Autumn Sale is so comparatively short-lived, I unfortunately don’t have enough time to make an entire list like I’ve done during the longer sales. Even so, time constraints won’t stop me from pointing out at least a couple of games I think you should check out before the Autumn Sale peters out.

First and foremost, Doom Eternal is currently discounted by 67%. As far as I’ve seen since the game released, that’s the deepest discount it has received to date. This discount slashes the game’s price down to an almost paltry $19.79 USD. What’s more, since today is Thanksgiving Day in the United States, I suspect that playing this title might really make you want to “rip and tear” into your traditional turkey feast. Then you can always return to slay some more demons after you’ve had your post-Thanksgiving dinner nap.

Secondly, we have Sid Meier’s Civilization VI. Civ VI is essentially my go-to game recommendation for pretty much anyone who will listen, as I’m sure some of our readers might be aware. I always recommend the Platinum Edition of the game above all else. That’s because it contains all the DLC you get for buying the Digital Deluxe edition of Civ 6, as well as both the Rise & Fall and Gathering Storm expansions.

The only thing the Platinum Edition won’t get you is the DLC-filled season pass, known as the New Frontier Pass. Thankfully, the New Frontier Pass is also discounted by 20%, bringing its asking price down to $31.99 USD. Alternatively, let’s say you’re unfamiliar with the Civ franchise and just want to dip your toe into it without dropping the cash for the Platinum Edition. In that case, the base game has had its price reduced to $14.99. Should you decide you like the “vanilla” game enough to pick up its expansions, you’ll find that Rise & Fall is discounted to $11.99, and Gathering Storm will set you back $15.99.