The Steam Summer Sale has begun, and it's a little weird this year

Steam sale dates are no longer the closely guarded secrets they used to be, but the arrival of the Steam Summer Sale still represents one of the biggest days on the PC gaming calendar. The 2022 event, which is now officially underway, is no different: There's the usual mountain of discounts on a huge range of games, plus Summer Sale trading cards, badges, something called Clorthax, and—for the first time ever, I believe—an official Steam Summer Sale trailer.

The Summer Sale is big, and as always we're going to dig through the deals to come up with some suggestions about where you might want to throw your money, based on where we might want to throw our money. To get things rolling quickly, though, here's the full rundown of every game that appeared in the Summer Sale trailer, in case something caught your eye and you want a closer look:

• Ghostwire: Tokyo
• Final Fantasy 14 Online
• The Elder Scrolls Online
• Cyberpunk 2077
• The Sims 4
• Sid Meier's Civilization 6
• Forza Horizon 5
• Apex Legends
• Rust
• Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege
• Raft
• Dead by Daylight
• God of War
• Destiny 2
• Core Keeper
• Ark: Survival Evolved
• Monster Hunter Rise
• FIFA 22
• Dying Light 2
• WWE 2K22
• Red Dead Redemption 2
• Black Desert
• Grand Theft Auto 5
• Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
• It Takes Two
• Sea of Thieves
• Cities: Skylines
• Risk of Rain 2
• Total War: Warhammer 3
• Phasmophobia
• V Rising
• Naraka: Bladepoint

If you've been a Steam user for any length of time, you'll likely know that an actual, official trailer from Valve promoting the event is extremely unusual—unprecedented, even. 

Yet the video above isn't the only one to roll out of Steam HQ to mark this year's virtual bazaar of bargoons. There's also a handy tutorial that explains Steam trading cards in detail: How they work, what they do, and why they might be worth your time to play around with.

Meet Sir Smashes-A-Lot:

Valve promised that no "sellable functioning hardware" was damaged during the making of the video, if you're concerned about such things.

As for Clorthax, he's a "time-travelling trickster" who's stolen ten best-selling games from the future and now wants to sell them to you. In order to avoid creating an ultra-destructive time paradox, he can't actually reveal the names of those games—but if you can guess them, you'll earn a new badge. It sounds (and looks, and almost certainly is) silly, but it could be a lot of fun, too: Clorthax and his associated quest were written by Valve veterans Jay Pinkerton and Eric Wolpaw, whose previous credits include Half-Life 2, Portal, Left 4 Dead, Half-Life: Alyx, and Aperture Desk Job.  

The Steam Summer Sale is live now and runs until 10 am PT/1 pm ET on July 7. And since Valve is leaning so heavily into videos for this one, let us take a moment to remember this absolute work of genius from 2016, courtesy of ClintBeastwood. Are you ready?