Nearly 19,000 videogame products released on Steam this year—18,945 as of press time, meaning if 50-some things get dropped before January 1, 2025 my headline there turns into a lie but whatever I'm going for it.

Steam sales used to be a big event. Logging in every day to check the flash sales and peruse the deep discounts was exciting and frequently rewarding. My friends and I would fill our carts with every co-op game under $5 we could find and spend the rest of Christmas break sampling our haul.