The next Steam sale, according to our list of Steam sale dates, is the Steam Survival Fest, running August 1-8; after that comes the Steam Next Fest, set for October 3-10. But there will be another event between those two: The intriguingly-named Steam Bash Bash, a one-week sale event that’s set to kick off on September 19.
The Steam Bash Bash is a themed sale that will focus, appropriately, on games about bashing people in the head with large, heavy objects—or, as Steam put it in the announcement, “games that emphasize combat with melee weapons as the primary game mechanic.”
That’s going to primarily mean “character action games, spectacle fighter[s], hack-and-slash, [and] musou,” Valve said, although games from other genres may also turn up: Individual games will be invited to take part in the sale based on how they meet the necessary “bash” criteria, including:
- RPG elements
- Third-person gameplay
- Fast-paced combat
- Swordplay, shooting, etc.
- Tracked combat combos or a visual representation of damage being dealt
- Character moveset/weapon customization
- Score/ranking system
It’s also worth noting, to properly differentiate between a bash and a donnybrook, that the sale is specifically for games featuring melee weapons, which means that your more fisticuffs-focused fun—beat-em-ups, arena fighters, that sort of thing—may be excluded. That also holds for looter-shooters, platform and puzzle-oriented action games, twin-stick shooters, and soulslikes—games that are violent, that is, but not in the specifically necessary fashion.
(To be honest, the specifics are ague and I suspect that the selection process is going to be at least a little bit arbitrary, and given the usual scale of Steam sales I imagine that if a game is close, it’ll be in.)
Along with the usual vast array of discounts, the Steam Bash Bash will also have sections dedicated to unreleased games and game demos. The whole thing kicks off at 10 am PT on September 19 and runs until the same time on September 26.