Steam Game Festival is now Steam Next Fest, and returns in June

The Steam Game Festival has rebranded to Steam Next Fest, and it's kicking off on June 16.

Earlier today, Valve unveiled Steam Next Fest, which is the return of the Steam Game Festival under a different name. The new festival will take place from June 16 to June 22, and will offer a boatload of demos, discounts, and game streams over the six days.

"We've renamed the Steam Game Festival to more directly communicate its focus," the announcement from Valve reads. "Explore and play hundreds of game demos, watch developer livestreams, and chat with the teams about their games in progress, coming soon to Steam."

The planned dates for the Steam Next Fest fall in line with the current scheduled dates for E3 2021. In February it was announced that E3 would return for 2021, and would be pushing for a digital showcase, mirroring the way in which the physical showcase for 2020 was abandoned due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Earlier this month, it was reported that E3 2021 had been cancelled in favor of an all-digital event. The event is currently scheduled to run between June 15 and June 17 - slightly less time than the Steam Next Fest - and will be trying to group up big name publishers like Sony and Microsoft for the traditional E3 showcase, but in an entirely digital format.

As always with Steam sales, you can expect hundreds, if not thousands, of games to be available at heavily reduced price points. It's a nice bonus for limited-time game demos to make a return to the festival in June, as we've seen in past years with Steam Game Festivals offering limited trials of upcoming games.

For a complete list of all the games scheduled to launch on PC and elsewhere throughout the year, head over to our new games 2021 guide for more.