The day Steam users have been waiting all year for is finally here. Yes - we all enjoy the Steam Summer sale, but no sale throughout the year is as big as Steam’s Winter sale, which kicks off later today and will end on January 4th at 10am PT.

The Steam Winter sale is kicking off later today at 10am PT. The sale date was previously revealed in a message Valve published on the Steamworks developer group, which also outed the Steam Autumn sale last month. We also learned both the Winter and Autumn sale would be slightly different than previous sales.

The Steam Winter sale won’t have Flash and Daily Sales. That means those of you who would check Steam on a regular basis during their sale to purchase a game at the absolute lowest price possible won’t need to hover over your PC or mobile device. Instead, Valve wants to “optimize the sale for customers and to allow [it] to feature and recommend [their] products in more ways to more customers.” To help with this, Valve asked developers to provide a single discount that will run the entire length of the Autumn sale.

If the Steam Autumn sale is any indication, you should expect to see games promoted on the frontpage of Steam every 24 - 48 hours, although their sale prices won’t change once they’re no longer promoted.

One tool we recommend using during the Steam Winter sale is the Steam Database sales tracker. The interface is really intuitive as you can find all of the games that are on sale as well as their pricing. You can also see what games have received the largest discount and if you log in with your Steam account, you can see what games you already have in your library so you don’t attempt to purchase them again.