PayPal Confirms Start Date for Steam Winter Sale 2016
By Brad Jones 19 December 2016
PayPal once again reveals the official start date of the Steam Winter Sale, confirming previous information that was leaked at the very beginning of December.
Christmas can be an expensive time of year, considering all the gifts that have to be bought, the amount of food that every household has to stock up on, the distance we’re expected to travel to see friends and relatives, and the number of festive social events we all end up being invited to. However, for gamers, the most expensive component of the yuletide season is often the Steam Winter Sale.
Seasonal sales are a big part of the Steam experience at this point, and many users have learned to save any non-essential purchases for the deep discounts that are implemented on a few select dates each year — even if not everybody in the industry is a fan of the practice. We now know exactly when the 2016 Steam Winter Sale will get underway, thanks to a tweet from the online payment platform PayPal.
Earlier this morning, the company bragged that it “had the scoop” on the start date for the promotion, and encouraged users to retweet their post to find out for themselves, according to a report by VG247. Of course, that information is already common knowledge: the 2016 Steam Holiday Sale will start on December 22.
PayPal may seem like a strange source for this kind of news, but the company has been picked to deliver Steam sale details several times in the past. Given that PayPal collects a percentage for providing a platform for these sales, it makes sense that the company would want to help promote the sale.
Rumors that this year’s Steam Winter Sale would get underway on December 22 first started to circulate at the beginning of this month. At the time, this information was taken with a pinch of salt, but PayPal’s confirmation would seem to suggest that the source was indeed legitimate.
That leak also stated that the Winter Sale would come to a close on January 2, 2017. While PayPal didn’t mention any end date in its tweet about the promotion, it seems increasingly likely that this information is accurate as well.
2016 has been a banner year for PC gaming, with a bevy of major releases including the likes of XCOM 2, Civilization 6, and Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak. Anyone and everyone with a capable system will be looking to the Steam Winter Sale with great interest, to see which big-name titles are discounted as part of the event.
The Steam Winter Sale will begin on December 22, 2016.
