Miss no Steam Sale offers with mobile apps

The Steam Summer sale is a much anticipated yearly event on Steam where nearly every game in the service's catalog is offered for a discount. I have published a guide previously that helps you make the most out of Steam Sales. While I do not want to rehash all that has been said already, it is important to follow certain guidelines to make sure you purchase games you are interested in for the best price they are offered in.

The sale this year, at least so far, offers daily deals that run for 24 hours after which they are replaced with the next batch of games. Next to that we have community choice sales in which the Steam community votes for a game that they want to see on sale, and Flash Sales which run only for eight hours.

If you do not want to miss a single sale, you need to log in every eight hours as both Community and Flash Sales are switched in that interval. This can be problematic if you are at work or another location where you cannot access Steam on a desktop system.

The only viable option is to use one of the mobile apps that Steam makes available to make sure you can sign in to your account and there to the Steam store to check up on the latest offers. While you can also browse to the Steam website using a mobile web browser, and sign in here if you spot an offer that you want to take advantage of, it is usually a lot easier to use the mobile apps for that instead.

Valve offers Steam apps for Android and iOS, but not for Windows Phone, BlackBerry or other mobile operating systems. If you use a smartphone without native Steam app, visit the Steam store manually and make your purchases there.

The Android app is easy to use. You do need to sign in first before you can make use of it though. Note that you may need to verify the first sign in with a code that is send to your email account. Make sure you test it out first at home or that you have access to your email account on your phone so that you can look up the code to enter it while you are on the road.

Tap on the settings icon on the upper left corner of the screen and select catalog from the menu. This opens the Store and the sale automatically.

Here you can browse all items that are currently on sale. A tap opens the game's profile page. Here you can read the game description, browse screenshots or the offers. You can add the game to the cart right away here and need to complete the purchase before the special promotion runs out.

It is sometimes possible to save even more by buying game packs, especially if it is a multiplayer game. The Borderlands 2 example gets you one copy of the game for free if you purchase it. So, instead of paying $10,19 for the game, you buy four licenses for $30,59 instead.  This makes sense if you want to play it with friends anyway who do not have the game yet.

Closing Words

You can use Steam's mobile apps to check new sales regularly even if you do not have access to a PC. This works well if you are abroad as well, and is securer than having to use a public Internet terminal or computer to sign in to Steam.

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