Valve has kicked off the latest edition of Steam Next Fest.
The week-long digital event, which includes access to hundreds ofPCgame demos, is running until February 13 at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm GMT.
In addition to game demos,Steam Next Festwill include a series of developer livestreams and give players the opportunity to chat with developers about their games in progress.
Steam Next Fest was previously known as the Steam Game Festival, which originally premiered as a spin-off toThe Game Awardsin December 2019.
Valvehas confirmed that its usualLunar New Year Sale won’t take placein 2023 and will instead be replaced by a Spring Sale, to make more of a gap after its Winter Sale (which ended on January 5).
Lunar New Year occurs on January 22 this year. Valve said it introduced Steam’s Lunar New Year Sale in 2016 following an influx of developers and customers from territories like Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, and South Korea.
“However, over the years we’ve received feedback that Lunar New Year was often much too close to the December holiday sale period,” it explained.
“We think many publishers will still opt to discount games around the Lunar New Year holiday, using the custom discount tools. But we suspect customers will be better served by a little bit more time between the big Steam-wide seasonal sales.”
Steam enjoyed a record-breaking weekend in early January,exceeding 10 million concurrent in-game playersfor the first time, while also surpassing 33 million concurrent online users.
