Steam Scream V Runs October 26 to November 2: Valve’s Halloween Sale Returns for a Fifth Year

The official Steam Scream V key art leaves no room for interpretation: October 26 to November 2, with the sale starting at 10 a.m. PT. Impulse Gamer’s report on October 23 confirms the window, and the art’s tagline — Five Years and Counting — marks this as the fifth annual edition. Valve has put up an official trailer on YouTube and a press kit on Dropbox, and the dedicated category hub at store.steampowered.com/category/scream goes live when the discounts do.

The start time is worth noting for a second reason: 10 a.m. PT on October 26 is the exact hour Steam Next Fest ends. Valve has stacked its autumn calendar back to back — the demo festival closes Monday morning and the horror sale opens the same morning. Anyone who tried horror demos during the fest goes into Monday with a head start on what to watch.

Valve is sorting the sale into three sub-genres. Silly Scary covers lighthearted, comedic and spooky co-op adventures — the party-game end of horror. SCARY Scary, in all caps, is the visceral, heart-pounding survival horror shelf. Psychologically Scary is for the mind-bending thrillers that linger after you log off. The split is a quiet admission that horror is one of Steam’s broadest tents, stretching from cartoon ghosts to genuine dread.

For indie horror, this is the showcase that matters most. The big seasonal sales belong to AAA blockbusters, but Halloween is the one event where smaller horror games headline — it is the reason studios time their spooky launches and demos for late October. Expect the deepest attention, if not the deepest discounts, to land on indie horror.

LINE Games’ co-op comedy horror QUIET put its official demo on Steam and the Epic Games Store on October 22 — four days before the sale starts. The premise is pure Silly Scary: alien ducks crash-land on Earth and must escape while avoiding the homeowner, playable solo or with up to four players. LINE Games says nearly 350,000 players across 148 countries registered for the earlier Steam playtest, and the demo includes one official stage plus Duck Out, an arcade stage for up to four players with its own distinct gameplay.

The demo also carries seasonal Halloween presentation, and LINE Games says QUIET will take part in the Scream Fest from October 27 to November

3. The full game targets a global launch in the first half of 2027 — the Steam page currently lists Q1

2027. A free demo landing days before the sale is the oldest trick in the seasonal playbook, and it works: try it this weekend, wishlist it, and see what Monday brings.

Treat the three categories as a filter, not a verdict — Silly Scary is where the co-op party games hide, and some of the best Halloween purchases are the ones you play with friends. Check discount history before buying; a 20 percent launch-week discount is not the same as a historic low, and horror indies discount often. Demos are the cheapest research: if a game has a free demo, play it before the sale starts so your wishlist is a decision list, not a guessing list.

And remember the calendar. The Winter Sale runs December 17 to January 4, so anything that is not a historic low now may well be cheaper then. Buy the horror you will actually play this week — the seasonal mood is half the product — and let the rest wait.