Steam Gamers Getting Hundreds of Free Downloads In Huge October Event

One of the biggest Steam events of the year is nearly upon us, and developers are already hard at work preparing for it.

It’s that time of the year again folks, because Valve just announced that a brand new Steam Next Fest is on its way next month.

In case you’re unfamiliar with Steam Next Fests, the first one was held back in 2022 to help promote new and upcoming indie games. The event has evolved a lot over the years and now takes place once every four-ish months, giving smaller devs several opportunities to advertise their games (by giving away demos).

Thankfully, as revealed by Valve themselves, we now have a date for the upcoming Steam Next Fest: October 13 to October 20, kicking off at 10 AM Pacific Time.

And that’s really all we know for now. As far as which games will be featured, your guess is as good as mine.

That being said, there is a little more info out there regarding the event (but it’s not exactly riveting stuff). Thanks to this document distributed to devs via the Steamworks service, we do know when we’ll hear some more news (regarding the games that will be featured, at least).

The press preview for the event takes place on October 2nd, so we'll know if there's anything especially exciting in a couple of weeks time. Valve also stated that, unlike the last October Steam Next Fest, there won’t be an official livestream this time around.

Thankfully, we do know of at least a few demos that will be featured already, because devs have been chatting about their experiences with the October Steam Next Fest over in a thread on the r/IndieDevs subreddit.

“Stressed to the max! I actually came down with a cold or something. I blame the demo! We release first thing tomorrow. Good luck everyone releasing soon!” commented Mech Monkey Studios.

“We are pretty on track to finish our demo, hopefully - some bugs to fix but nothing crazy has come up yet. The challenge is more getting the rest of the game done on the tight timeline. It would be great if Next Fest goes well and gives us a motivation boost!” replied a dev from Glowfrog Games.

Sheesh, sometimes I forget how stressful it must be to be an indie developer in 2025.

Best of luck to everyone involved this time around. I hope you all get millions of wishlists.

We’ll be keeping an eye on the best games featured in the event, so set a reminder to check back here in the middle of October for some recommendations!