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Buying PC Games

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Overview

These days, there are many different places to buy PC games from. These places can fall under one of two umbrellas, either brick-and-mortar or digital. Brick and mortar sales come from buying a physical copy of the game from a physical store, and digital is purchasing a digital copy of the game from one of the numerous online services out there.

Examples of Brick and mortar stores include:

  • Best Buy
  • GameStop
  • Target

Examples of digital storefronts include:

Some online retailers (such as Amazon) offer both digital download and physical copies of games.

Differences

Most recent retail releases require activation on a digital distribution service (Steam, Origin or Uplay) and so are functionally identical to buying the game digitally. For older games, or games that don't activate on a service, one of the important differences between a physical copy of a game and a digital copy of the game is licensing. In most cases, a physical copy of a game is considered a good, while a digital copy of a game is often considered a service. For example, the first sale doctrine allows you to sell your physical copy of a game, while most digital storefronts disallow you from selling your game. This isn't the only important distinction. Because of the myriad rights that apply to a game, games can conceivably be pulled from a digital storefront, or even removed from your library after a purchase.

That being said, digital storefronts have their perks as well. Most digital storefronts allow you to install games from any computer with a simple log-in. Games can usually be found for much cheaper digitally than their physical counterpart.

Sales

Game Sales Listings

CheapShark

CheapShark keeps track of game prices on a number of stores such as Steam, Amazon, Green Man Gaming, and a few others. It lets you see top rated deals, as well as filter and sort deals however you want. In addition, there is a feature to set up an email alert to wait for a game to go below a price you're willing to pay.

GG.deals

GG.deals keeps track of deals on a number of stores

IsThereAnyDeal.com

IsThereAnyDeal.com provides four related services for game buyers:

  1. A deal search system which does not calculate a "deal score" like CheapShark but tracks over twice as many vendors (26 vs. 12 as of this writing) and provides a much more featureful filtering system (offering filters such as "75% off", "Historically lowest price", and Windows/Linux/Macintosh).
  2. A detailed overview of any given game's DRM status and historical pricing across all monitored stores (including inter-region pricing comparison and DLC overview)
  3. A "waitlist" system capable of sending e-mail notifications when games come on sale at a user-specified price point. (Import mechanisms for various sites' wishlists are provided)
  4. A collection manager useful for quickly determining which games you already own via which stores. As with the waitlist, import mechanisms are provided. Furthermore, an option is provided to automatically remove waitlist entries as their associated games enter your collection.

The site serves six geo-economic regions, each with its own pricing data: North America, the United Kingdom, Continental Europe (subdivided into two zones), Brazil, and Australia.

SteamDB

SteamDB has a dedicated page that keeps track of sales on Steam

Reddit

  • r/GameDeals - is subreddit which features a high proportion of PC digital distribution game sales.