Steam Summer Sale Starts: Store Down As Deals Dashed

Here's a bit of good news: PayPal was right and the Steam Summer Sale kicked off today! Now here's a bit of bad news: the Steam store is currently crippled because of heavy traffic. If you've got some money burning a hole in your pocket, it looks like you'll have to wait to spend it.

Ever since the sale went live at 1 PM Eastern/10 AM Pacific, the Steam store has been laggy, slow-loading, and at some points, completely unresponsive. Though it has shown signs of life at various times throughout the last hour, it isn't long before it all comes screeching to a halt with another crash.

Perhaps that isn't surprising, considering the sheer scale of these Steam sales. This year's Summer Sale should see a large portion of the Steam catalog discounted. In many cases, these discounts are the lowest these games will go until the Steam Winter Sale begins around Christmas time.

As is usually the case with these big sales, Steam has implemented a mini-game to go along with the discounts. The mini-game this year has you doing different tasks around the Steam store (such as viewing your discovery queue) to pack a sticker book with stickers. Complete the quests that Steam gives you and you'll be able to craft a badge for your profile, but keep in mind that trading cards won't be earned by filling out the sticker book. If you want Summer Sale trading cards, you'll need to get them the old fashioned way – by purchasing games and trading for the cards you need.

You've got just over two weeks to pack your Steam library with discounted games, as the Steam Summer sales wraps up on July 5 at 10 AM Pacific time. You don't need to worry about deals rotating in and out, either, because as with all Steam sales in recent memory, all of the games on sale will be at their lowest price for the duration. What are you picking up? Head down to the comments section and let us know!