arber a dit :

At what time do preordered games on steam unlock?

Ultimately, they unlock when someone at the Valve office decides to unlock them. As that apparently still needs to be done manually, midnight releases, etc., not only depend on the publisher requesting one, but also on whether the person in charge of that specific release at Valve is prepared to stay until midnight. This is further complicated by differing time zones, as midnight in one time zone could be 3 or 4 am for Valve.

So ultimately, if you see a timer on a store page, take it as a rough indication of the actual release time (may need to add on a few hours - and in very rare cases, a day or two).