How to actually pay less for PC games without getting burned

Full price is for people who don't know any better. Most PC games drop hard within a few months of launch, and the ones that don't tend to go on sale eventually if you're patient. The whole trick is knowing when to wait and where to actually click buy. Here's how I do it.

Wishlist everything, buy nothing on day one

The best habit you can build is adding games to a wishlist and letting them sit. Steam pings you when something you want goes on sale, and our price alerts do the same across every store we track, not just Steam. I've lost count of the times I nearly paid full whack for something that was a third of the price three weeks later. Patience is basically free money.

Check the price history before you trust a "deal"

A red discount sticker means nothing on its own. Some shops quietly bump the so called RRP right before a sale so the maths looks better than it is. That's why every game page here has a proper price history chart. If a game has sat at £15 for months and it's "on sale" for £14.99, that isn't a deal, that's Tuesday. Look at the all time low and judge from there.

Key resellers: cheaper, but read the room

This is where the real savings live, and also where people get nervous. Marketplaces like Gamivo and Eneba are often miles cheaper than the official stores, because sellers pick up keys in regions where games cost less. For loads of titles that's completely fine and you'll save a tenner or more. The honest catch is that these are grey market, so support can be hit and miss if a key ever plays up, and publishers aren't keen on them.

My rule of thumb is simple. For big single player games I'm only ever going to activate once, I'll happily grab a cheap key. For anything with anti cheat or an account I actually care about, I lean towards an authorised store like Fanatical or GOG even if it's a couple of quid more. Chilled out single player stuff like No Man's Sky or Satisfactory is perfect cheap key territory.

Time it around the big sales

If you can hold out, the seasonal Steam sales (summer and winter especially) drag prices down everywhere, because the key shops have to compete to stay cheaper. Anything from the last couple of years usually hits its lowest ever price in those windows. Older stuff like Cyberpunk 2077 goes properly cheap. New releases barely budge, so if you genuinely must have it at launch, at least compare a couple of keys first instead of slapping full price on Steam out of habit.

The short version

Wishlist it, watch the history, set an alert, and let the price come to you. When you do buy, take ten seconds to compare a couple of stores. That's the whole thing. Do that and you'll basically never overpay again, which just leaves more in the pot for the next one.