Steam Summer Sale 2020 Is Here With A New Points Shop In Tow

As the leaks and rumors foretold, the 2020 Steam Summer Sale has officially launched. As always, the Summer Sale will see many of the games in Steam's catalog discounted significantly, but this year, the Summer Sale is bringing a new – and permanent – Points Shop along with it.

If you log into Steam at the moment, you'll likely see that you have a Steam Points balance. You'll earn more points when you spend money on pretty much anything available through Steam – 100 points for each dollar spent, in fact. Games, DLC, hardware, applications, soundtracks, and in-game items will all net you points when you buy them.

When you've racked up some points, you'll head to the Points Shop to spend them on profile customization items. These can be frames for your avatar, mini-profile backgrounds, animated avatars, animated stickers, and chat effects. Points that you earn don't expire and the Points Shop will be open year-round, but the items you get by redeeming your points aren't marketable or tradeable.

Aside from the launch of the Points Shop, the Steam Summer Sale is more or less what you'd expect, with a ton of discounts on games and a rotating selection of featured deals. The Steam Store seems to be struggling because of the surge in traffic from people wanting to buy things in the sale, and by extension, the Points Shop is having trouble completing orders. That isn't really a surprise, as it seems that Steam's servers are crippled with the launch of each sale.

So, if you've had your eye on a certain game, it might not be a bad idea to give it a few hours before you attempt to buy it. The 2020 Steam Summer Sale is live now until July 9th at 10 AM PDT, so you've got two weeks on the nose to make your buying decisions.