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(Previous threads: 2014-2017, 2012-2014)
Regular maintenance happens about 4pm PST Tuesdays. If Steam goes down around then, that's probably why. Head to Steamstat.us to verify that it's not just you.
Want to join the official Something Awful group? Head thataway.
Want to post a giveaway? Don't do it in this thread, it'll be lurked by who-knows-what. Instead, head here, where it's permanently sheltered by the paywall. That way, you'll know a goon grabbed your gift. Feel free to organise group buys of multipacks here, though.
Want to trade away your games instead? We've got a thread for that too. Note: the rules regarding trading have gotten a lot more restrictive. Details further down this post.
IRC. Still kicking. Details here. If you prefer Mumble, we've got that too. Discord? Pick yer poison.
Found a piece of trash on Steam and want to mock its existence? The thread for that is over there.
There are no longer any daily deals during the big sales, so feel free to go nuts on day 1.
No, G2A are not legit, don't buy from them.
Welcome to the new Steam thread, where we discuss Steam and the many, many, many games that can be purchased and downloaded from this particular website/client combo. This also doubles as the PC gaming megathread, so feel free to 
even if your post doesn't necessarily involve Steam.
Website: http://store.steampowered.com/
Game Recommendations:
There's a tradition in this thread whereby users spend about a month reviewing a bunch of games on a similar theme, one game at a time. Here's a list of some of these lists.
Note: Credit to Palpek for initially compiling this list for the Summer Sale 2017 thread.
Bonus: Palpek's recommendation list from 2014. Hasn't been updated in a while, but still a good list of good older games that tend to go cheap on Steam sales.
Useful Websites & Apps
- Is There Any Deal takes your Steam wishlist, compares the prices of all the games on it against an array of known legit digital distributors, and emails you when prices drop. Additionally, it also notifies you if any of said wishlisted games wind up in a bundle. For bargain hunters, this is essential. Other good sale sites include CheapShark and SavyGamer.
- Enhanced Steam is a plug-in for Chrome, Firefox and Opera (and eventually Edge) that takes the Steam website and adds pretty much all the fixes you want from it. Want price comparisons right on the store page? You've got it (powered by Is There Any Deal :v
. Want to know how many players are playing that multiplayer game you're about to buy? This puts that information right in the store page. Want a quick way to throw your cards onto the Marketplace for slightly less than the lowest card already on there? Available with this plug-in. Want the page to remind you how much you've spent in the life of your Steam account? That's a feature! Highly recommended for everyone to use.
- TikiOne Steam Cleaner gets rid of all the redistributable packages that Steam likes to download. Save a few gigabytes, the quick and easy way. Now works with Origin and GOG's Galaxy client.
- Depressurizer is a tool for categorising your Steam library. It's headline feature is the ability to auto-categorise your library, but there's also a bunch of features for people who like to manage their categories manually. For people with big libraries, this is a great tool.
- IdleMaster. From the maker of Enhanced Steam comes this simple app that idles your Steam games so that cards drop. It also automatically switches games when it has extracted all of the cards from a game. For extracting some Steam credit out of your games before a sale, this sure beats cryptocurrency mining. Warning: Steam records idling time as "playing the game" time, so this may spoil the recommendations Steam gives you in the store. Also, it can be a bit temperamental, particularly regarding remembering your Steam details.
- Best of the rest: Steam Gifts allows you to raffle off games to pubbies, GameSave Manager gathers up your save games into backups (but updates has slowed, largely due to a rebuild into C# that has been taking years), KeePass keeps all your passwords secure, and CCleaner cleans crap off your computer (don't use the registry cleaner, it's worthless).
The Trading Changes:
So, the changes to trading is as follows:
- Sending gifts to your inventory or an arbitrary email address is now no longer permitted.
- Games can only be gifted to Steam users at the point of purchase.
- Additionally, there's now an automated block whereby if the game happens to be 10% more expensive in the recipient's country, you are blocked from gifting the game.
- This is in addition to the blocks the publisher may have manually added to the game.
End result, gifting is a lot more difficult, and it's no longer possible to hoard games when they are cheap for future gifting [strike]or future resale[/strike]. Therefore, if you do want to trade, you'll need to check whether or not you'll be hit by the automated block (by checking prices in both the sender and recipient's countries).
FAQ
I have a problem!
General rules of thumb to try first:
a) If it’s a specific game that’s having problems, right click the problem game > Properties > Local Files > Verify Integrity
b) If that doesn’t work, or if it’s a client issue, shut down Steam, go to the Steam folder, and delete/rename ClientRegistry.blob, then start Steam up again.
c) Restart your computer. Works surprisingly often. 
The Steam client is super slow!
Try either of these:
a) Go to Settings > Web Browser > Delete Cache.
b) Alternatively, launch the Control Panel, go to Internet Options > Connections > LAN Settings and uncheck “Automatically detect settings”.
Uplay is broken!
Since Assassin's Creed 2 in 2009, nearly all Ubisoft games on Steam come bundled with a required launcher called Uplay. The problem is that nobody updated the installers, meaning that 2009-2011 ish Ubisoft games now attempts to install a completely broken launcher that refuses to update. The solution: download the new version of this client first. Trust me, it saves a lot of headaches.
Thankfully, there are far fewer reports of Uplay eating cloud saves these days, but it's probably still worth noting. 
How do I uninstall/reinstall Steam without losing all my games, saves and settings?
If for whatever reason you need to reinstall Steam (for example, because deleting ClientRegistry.blob doesn't do shit for you, or because a Steam Client update has gone horribly, horribly wrong for some reason), or want to uninstall it but save your game files for a future installation of Steam, this is how you do it:
Logout & Exit out of Steam. Make sure its process isn't running anymore by checking with the Task Manager.
Go to where you've installed Steam, the default directories are usually C:Program Files (x86)Steam, C:Program FilesSteam or C:Program FilesValveSteam.
Move the folders named depotcache, SteamApps and userdata out of the Steam folder. The first folder keeps your pre-load files and information about what you have installed (thanks for the info, gibbed!), the second folder contains all of your downloaded game & source modifications files, the third folder keeps your local copies of Steamworks' Cloud-enabled games' savegames and screenshots, plus stuff like external shortcuts for non-Steam games you've added manually.
You might want to also move the skins folder if you want to keep any custom skins, though if you haven't done any modifications to them you can just reinstall them later. Also, if you want to save any custom files in your Steam folder like custom Grid Icons or any external apps, be sure to move those somewhere else as well.
After that, you have two options. Either you use Steam's uninstaller:
• Click the Windows Start button and select Control Panel
• Open the Add or Remove Programs dialog
• Select Steam from the list and click the Change/Remove button
• Select the Automatic option and click Next
• Click Finish to uninstall Steam
Or, you can manually remove Steam:
• Manually delete all of the remaining contents of your Steam directory. BE SURE THAT YOU'RE NOT DELETING ANYTHING YOU'RE GONNA BE MAD ABOUT LOSING LATER!
• If you need to clean out your Windows Registry (YOU SHOULD KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING), go to Start > Run and type in regedit.
• For 32-bit operating systems:
- In the left-hand column of your registry editor, navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREValve.
- Right-click on Valve and select Delete.
• For 64-bit operating systems:
- In the left-hand column of your registry editor, navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREWow6432NodeValve.
- Right-click on Valve and select Delete.
• In the left-hand column of your registry editor, navigate to: HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareValveSteam.
• Right-click on Valve select Delete.
• Close your Registry Editor.
After that, you can just reinstall Steam and move the "evacuated" folders back to where they belong.
My client/Steam website has changed to a foreign language. How do I fix it?
Sometimes Steam decides to change the selected language on its own. Nobody has any idea why. The easiest way to fix this, go to the Steam website and select English in the drop down box, as shown by this picture by Heran Bago:
If you have Enhanced Steam installed, there's an option to flag up when you're browsing a non-English version. You'll see the red bar in the picture, which automatically fixes this problem when you click on it. Another reason why Enhanced Steam is a pro-download.
This game/DLC sucks/just went on sale after I bought it/is busted/. Can I get my money back?
With some exceptions (that tell you prior to purchasing the thing), yes you can, so long as you've bought it within the last two weeks and haven't played it for more than two hours. If you're within these rules, full refunds are available, automatic and are (largely) quibble-free.
Should I buy this movie on Steam?
No, because you won't get a download, it's strictly steaming. Considering most of Steam's movie catalogue are the sort of zero-budget indie fare that's also available on Vimeo, VHX and GOG, you should go there since you'll (usually) get a download copy for your money.
Is G2A/Kinguin/G2Play dodgy?
Yes, very dodgy. These sites resell keys. They don't give a crap if said keys are stolen or fraudulent. You are strongly advised to avoid G2A, G2Play and Kinguin.
And finally...
