Steam Autumn Sale 2026 Is Live Through October 8 With Resident Evil Requiem, Lego Batman and 007 First Light at $48.99

By CriticalPixel · 2026-10-02

The Steam Autumn Sale 2026 went live on October 1, and Valve's own banner says it runs through October 8 at 10 AM PT. That is a one-week sale, so the usual panic-buy window is short. PC Gamer's Andy Chalk counted more than 44,000 games under five dollars on SteamDB, a number so big it stops meaning anything. What matters more is that three of this year's biggest $70 releases have already dropped below $50, and that is where most of your money should be heading. Here is what is worth your attention before the clock runs out.

Official Resident Evil Requiem screenshot from its Steam store page, one of the games discounted in the Steam Autumn Sale

What the sale covers and when it ends

Valve keeps the formula steady: thousands of discounts, stickers to earn, and new items in the Points Shop. The official sale page leads with a featured row of deep cuts on all-time greats, with some titles showing 90 and 95 percent off, and the sale banner spells out the window as on now through October 8 at 10 AM PT. I checked the storefront through a Brazilian account, so local prices show in reais and I am sticking to the US dollar numbers PC Gamer published. On that Brazilian front page, ARC Raiders sat at half off, while Death Stranding 2, Halo: Campaign Evolved and Forza Horizon 6 each showed 20 percent off. The newest big names are discounted, just not generously.

The $48.99 club

The headline is the trio PC Gamer flagged first. Resident Evil Requiem, Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight and 007 First Light each list at $48.99, down from $69.99, which is a 30 percent cut. Requiem launched in February, so Capcom's survival horror is roughly eight months old and already under fifty bucks, and its Steam store page carries the 30 percent banner to prove it. PC Gamer's review of the Lego game says it is the most Arkham game since the last Arkham game, which is high praise for a toy brick adventure. The Bond game is more divisive, since PC Gamer's Josh did not find IO Interactive's 007 debut very inspiring, though Steam reviewers are largely happy with it. If you skipped all three at launch because $70 felt steep, this is the first real window to jump in.

Smaller deals worth a look

Further down the list, the picks get more interesting for people who do not need an AAA price tag. Endless Legend 2 is $24.99, down from $49.99, and PC Gamer's review praised it as a magnificent example of why Amplitude is so loved by 4X fans. Xenonauts 2 is $19.99 from $39.99, an old-school X-COM style tactics game that went 1.0 this year. Solasta 2 is half off at $31.48 from $62.98, though it is still in early access. Big Walk, a co-op puzzle game that supports up to 12 players, is $15.99 from $19.99, and Stick it to the Stickman is $5.99 from $11.99 after only releasing in September. Marathon is on the list too at $23.99, down from $39.99, a discount PC Gamer admits will earn as much social media dunking as buying.

Second official Resident Evil Requiem screenshot from the Steam store page

Why the 44,000 number needs a footnote

PC Gamer's first headline said more than 2,000 games were available for $5 or less. The outlet later corrected the piece after SteamDB stopped getting hammered and showed 44,048 games under a fiver, so the story now says 44,000. That correction is a decent reminder that a giant count tells you nothing about quality. Chalk himself notes that many of those deeply cheap games probably are not top tier, and the sheer volume of discounts means you should lean on Steam's filters for genre, release date and minimum user rating. He also says he will try to get colleague Ted Litchfield to repeat his list of 31 five-dollar games from the Summer Sale, with no promises. The sale ships with a Points Shop refresh and stickers too, which is Valve's usual way of turning a discount event into a loyalty program for your wallet.

How people reacted

Reaction on X was thin and mostly skeptical, so I will not pretend there is a consensus. Under PC Gamer's post, which still carries the old 2,000 figure, one reader took the headline to mean 2,000 games for five dollars total, another said they would wait for a 2,100 games for $5 bundle, and one called the article a nothing burger because it does not list any games. Others joked that you can buy all of them and never play a single one, which is the most accurate review of any Steam sale ever written. That is a handful of independent reactions at best, so call it limited and tilted toward jokes about backlogs.

The CriticalPixel take

Steam sales are the one time of year publishers admit what their launch prices were worth. Resident Evil Requiem, Lego Batman and 007 First Light all list at $69.99 and all sit at the same $48.99 now, which tells you where the real price of a modern AAA game settles. If you paid $70 on day one, that was a 30 percent tax for impatience, and it is a tax Capcom and IO Interactive are happy to keep collecting. Marathon at $23.99 is the other eyebrow raiser, because a live service shooter that already sits in discount territory is a warning about its player count, and I would rather wait and see how it plays than pay for a promise. The best buys on the list are the strategy games, where Endless Legend 2 and Xenonauts 2 are priced like they respect your time. Fresh heavy hitters like Death Stranding 2 and Forza Horizon 6 at only 20 percent off are a reminder that the newest stuff rarely gets the deep cut in week one.

The sale ends October 8 at 10 AM PT, which is a Thursday morning on the West Coast, so you have a week to decide. Use the filters, read the reviews, and do not let a 90 percent off banner talk you into a game you will never launch. If you only buy one thing, make it the game you were already waiting to grab at a lower price. Everything else is just another entry in the backlog.