Launched in 2003 Steam has grown to dominate the video games market on the PC. Although there are plenty of pretenders for the crown none have yet surpassed this colossus. Heck some stores like Humble Bundle even sell Steam Keys. This isn't a history lesson though. In this video I'm going to show you the features and tools I've found to make the most out of this service.

First lets start with the obvious, the steam sales. There are so many memes around the famous reductions they are hard to miss. During major holidays Steam offers massive discounts on a wide selection of games and this is one of the main reason why Steam dominates the market. Sales aren't restricted to the time of year either. A sale can be called to cover a genre, franchise or developer. There are also specials on all the time where games are reduced to a certain price.

Where as the non holidays sales and specials can't be predicted the holiday specials can. There are a couple of sites that can help with this. Whenisthenextsteamsale.com is my favourite and the simplest to use. It shows a prediction based on previous years when the next sale is and whether this date has been confirmed.

When talking about third party sites steamdb.info is worthy of your attention. It offers a wide array of tools to help you make a considered purchase. Their own next sale page covers predicted sale dates, historical events as well as some upcoming. My favourite tool on the site is available to you by searching for a particular game.

Now for those that have a VPN each games page is dominated by prices from other countries. You could grab a bargain by looking for the cheapest country and purchasing a steam key from that region. Sure you'll get a deal but you'll be your breaking T&Cs, drastically reducing devs income not to mention encouraging higher game prices for a people that can't afford them but go ahead I won't judge you.

Anyway my favourite tool is just below that list. Make sure your country is set correctly and you can see a price history for your dream game. Look along the graph and you can see how the price of a game has dropped and what price it was at it's lowest. This way you can confirm a sale is the best time to buy and you don't pay more than you have too.

If you're interested in historically low prices for games you can buy now, the sales page has got you covered. You can sort the results to only show games currently at their lowest price. You can see from the page I have open, steam has never sold Mass Effect, Destroy All Humans or Mirrors Edge :Catalyst cheaper than right now.

Alongside sales Steam offer free promotions where you can try out a game for a limited time or even be given a game. Steamdb has a page that shows you upcoming and ongoing free promotions as well as how long they last.

There are plenty of other tools on the site that cover player numbers and filtering games by genre but I'll concentrate on the price here.

Getting back to Steam you can dramatically increase your library by asking a friend to share theirs. Gone are the days for PC users to just swap disk to play each others games. Now you can borrow their whole library. There are a few caveats though. Your friend can't be playing at the same time and you can only have five members that can share your library. Still not a bad trade.

Something also worth mentioning is the Steam refund policy. If you don't like a game you can get a refund for it as long as you've played it for less than 2 hour and owned it for less than 14 days. There's controversy around this policy though. Where, usually indie devs, that make a great but short game are getting taken advantage of. We all like a deal but come on don't take the mick.

If you want a game that normally costs something but want it for nothing there is a way and you don't need to sell your soul either. When you play a game and complete achievements you earn collectors cards. These cards can be sold for money in your steam wallet. Selling all my duplicates on the market got me 26p. Sooo. It's a good job you can search those steam sales to make the most of whatever you earn.

Please share any tips you might have in any of my social media platforms. See you in the next one.