If you're struggling to decide on what to pick up during the Steam Spring Sale 2026 - got you covered. Here's a bunch of great games at under £5.

With the way the world is going - budgets are understandably tight, so hopefully this gives you a jumping off point to grab some quality gaming time. All of these listed below work on Linux either with a Native build or perfectly via Proton.

I just noticed the extremely low price for the game from 2010, a historical low on Steam price for 2,99 € (and looks like in USD as well). There are still a few days left before sale ends. This is just a heads up for anyone wanting to get into the Civ series, this is an extremely cheap option of a very decent game. Lot of people didn't like Civ 6 and the current Civ 7 and therefore Civ 5 is for them the peak of modern Civilization game.

For anyone running Linux, game works perfectly fine. I played a lot.

• Steam store page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/8930/Sid_Meiers_Civilization_V/
• Proton DB community reports: https://www.protondb.com/app/8930

Unfortunately this game is not on GOG yet (but other entries of the series is, weird). You can vote to bring it to GOG. In case you are interested into that:

• https://www.gog.com/dreamlist/game/sid-meier-s-civilization-v

ARC Raiders is still one of the most popular games around right now, and thankfully some of the generative AI voices are getting replaced.

The CEO of Embark Studios, Patrick Söderlund, spoke to GamesIndustry.biz in an interview covering a nice selection of topics. And of course, since generative AI is a hot topic and ARC Raiders has been using it - that was touched on as well.

The free and open source PlayStation 3 emulator RPCS3 is getting easier to use with Steam, with the devs announcing a useful new feature.

In an update posted on X/Twitter, they announced "You can now add games to Steam directly from RPCS3! Games can be launched directly from Steam, without going through the main RPCS3 UI." and provided a couple screenshots to show it off

Valve released a new Steam client update on March 9. Notably, users can now attach hardware specifications when writing or editing reviews on a game’s store page. The client can also optionally collect anonymized gameplay framerate data.

When enabled, Steam records framerate information based on hardware type, without linking it to specific accounts. Valve states this data will improve compatibility insights across systems. The feature is currently in beta and initially targets SteamOS devices.

Valve Corporation makers of Steam are facing yet another lawsuit, this time around video game audio from the Performing Right Society (PRS) in the UK.

That's on top of the ongoing issue in the UK from Vicki Shotbolt that was recently given the go-ahead, and from New York on their lootboxes. Although, Valve did recently win their case against patent troll Rothschild and associated companies.

What's interesting is that this new lawsuit is centred around games generally being sold and downloaded on Steam, it's not specifically to do with Valve's own games. It's about Valve being the supplier of the games under the UK's Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988 (Section 20). So not only do games need their music licenses, but Valve as a store is supposed to have a license too.

Valve released a new stable Steam Client update today, which brings a few interesting new features related to their hardware surveys and Steam user reviews, as well as improvements for Proton games on Linux, and other changes.

The new Steam Client update introduces an option to attach hardware specs when writing or updating a Steam User Review on a game’s store page, adds notification settings for showing a toast and playing a sound when an achievement is unlocked, and adds an option to provide anonymized framerate data.