When it comes to buying PC games online, you have quite a few choices. In the old days, Steam was the only game in town, but not anymore. Before picking up a game, check all the stores to make sure you’re getting the best price. You can do so using an online tool—see later in this post.
Here’s a list of places to buy your PC games
1. Steam
Let’s get the obvious one out of the way first. Perhaps you’re new to gaming or you’ve always bought your games offline, at a brick and mortar store, so you don’t know about Steam.
Steam is the most popular place to buy games. It has a great selection and accepts most currencies. Check reviews carefully at Steam because it’s the most open platform when it comes to allowing developers to add their games to its store. The quality of games on the platform can range from superb to just terrible.
If you’ve never bought a game on Steam before, check out my How to Play a Game on Steam post.
2. Epic Games Store
The Epic Games store is a relatively new player in the online gaming store area. Apparently it offers developers a better revenue percentage from each sale of their game. However, some gamers don’t like it because they only want to buy their games at one specific store. Epic has managed to land a bunch of exclusives, meaning you can only buy some games at the Epic store. Some Epic exclusives are popular. For example, the last game in The Walking Dead narrative game series is only available at Epic.
To me, a store is a store is a store. I don’t have loyalty to one platform. If a store has a game I want at the best price, I’ll buy it there.
3. GOG
GOG started out as Good Old Games. It specialized in older PC games that might not run any longer on modern PCs unless you wanted to fiddle around with DOSBox, a DOS emulator, or with configuration files. In other words, you couldn’t just buy these older games, install them, and run.
GOG’s developers received the rights from some older games’ original publishers to make the games easy to run on modern PCs, and then sell them. All sorts of great golden oldies are available at GOG.
Over time GOG has changed and now it sells all sorts of games. It still sells older games that you can’t find anywhere else, but it also offers modern games, too.
An important feature at GOG is that all games are sold DRM-free. Some gamers prefer to buy their games at GOG for that reason. They’ll only buy a game from somewhere else if it’s not available at GOG. DRM-free means that you don’t have to be logged in to any platform to play the game, and it’s not tied to any one device.
4. Origin
Origin is Electronic Arts’ gaming platform, but it’s not limited to games published by EA. It has branched out to sell other games, as well, but it still only has a limited selection of games.
For years, some games have been exclusively available on Origin, such as the Mass Effect and Dragon Age series from BioWare. But recently, EA announced that its games would be returning to Steam.
That won’t mean the end of Origin though, because it also offers a subscription service called Origin Access, an all-in-one monthly subscription that gives you access to Origin’s entire game library. Of course, if you play a game using your subscription, you don’t actually own it. But if you’re not the type who replays games, you won’t care about that, and you always have the option of buying the games you really enjoyed, either from Origin or another online store.
I expect that Origin will continue to sell games too, but we’ll have to see.
5. Humble Bundle
Humble Bundle has been around for a while. It has a typical store where you can buy games, but it also offers a lot of cool bundles (hence the name) that you can buy for decent prices. The other cool thing about Humble Bundle is that it donates a portion of each game sold to charity. You can buy games and do good at the same time.
When you buy a game at Humble Bundle, you’ll obtain a game key that you have to activate at one of the gaming platforms. Typically this will be a Steam key, but recently Epic Game keys are being sold too.
Humble Bundle has a subscription service called Humble Choice that gives you a bundle of games each month for a deeply discounted price. It’s worth checking out.
6. Green Man Gaming and Fanatical.
Green Man Gaming and Fanatical are two third-party key sellers. There are more, but these two and Humble are popular. I listed Humble separately because it donates to charity.
When you buy a game from a third-party key seller, you’ll receive a key that you have to activate at a platform like Steam. These sellers often have great discounts running, so check them before you buy a game at the Steam store.
If you’re not sure how to activate a key, read my post on How to Play Games on Steam.
7. UPlay
UPlay is Ubisoft’s gaming platform. It also has a store where you can buy Ubisoft games. Its selection is quite limited, though. But regardless of where you buy a Ubisoft game, you have to activate it through the UPlay platform.
8. Game Publisher and Developer Sites
Most large game publishers (and some developers) have their own stores. For example, you can buy Beamdog games (the company that has released enhanced editions of many older BioWare RPGs) from Beamdog. You can buy Bethesda games (Elder Scrolls, Fallout) directly from the Bethesda store.
When you buy games directly from the publisher, you’ll usually have the choice to receive a Steam key so you can play the game through Steam and take advantage of features like achievements.
Some publishers have their own gaming platforms. Origin and UPlay are examples. In this case, you won’t receive a Steam key, because you’ll activate and play the game through the publisher’s platform.
You can usually buy MMO games directly from the publisher. That’s the route I usually take, since it cuts out a middleman. When buying MMOs, you generally don’t receive a Steam key because there’s no need to log into a gaming platform for DRM purposes. You can just go ahead and log in to the game directly.
9. Amazon
Yep, you can buy games at Amazon. Since most shoppers are familiar with Amazon, I won’t say much else, except that what you’ll usually receive is a key that you can activate at Steam or on another platform, even when you receive a physical product. Inside the box will be a key.
10. Big Fish Games
Big Fish Games is the most popular store for hidden object, HOPA, time management, and other types of “casual” games. It has a huge selection and tons of exclusives. There are HOPA games here that you won’t find anywhere else. Eventually most of them make their way to Steam, but often months or years after their original release.
If you buy a lot of these types of games, you’ll probably want to join the Big Fish Game Club. Doing so pretty much means you’ll get all games at half price, but you’ll also have to pay a monthly subscription fee. I’ve belonged to the club for a while and find it worthwhile. The subscription fee is less than $10/month and you get a free game credit every month, which is good for one standard game. Save up two credits and you’ll get a collector’s edition for free.
Using a Tool to Find the Best Price
With all these stores, you might be wondering if you need to check all of them before you buy a game, to make sure you’re getting the best price.
Usually you’ll have two or three favourite stores and forget about the rest, unless one store has an exclusive on a game you really want. So you’ll check the two or three stores and then go ahead and purchase the game.
But if you really want to make sure you’re getting the best deal, you can go to Is There Any Deal. Search for the game you’re interested in, and you’ll see what the current best price is. If you want to see a table of prices at all the stores, just click on the game and you’ll go to another page with all the current prices.
If you scroll past the table, you’ll also see all available coupon codes, which is great.
Is There Any Deal will include prices from many stores I didn’t mention here. Some are lesser-known stores, and some are large stores (like the Windows store).
If you create an account, you can be notified when deals are available for the games you’re interested in.
Final Word
Steam isn’t the only game in town (no pun intended!) when it comes to buying games online. Sometimes you’ll have to buy from another store because it has an exclusive on a game. Other times you’ll want to get the best deal. Or maybe you want a portion of your purchase to go to charity, or you want your games to be DRM-free. The good news is that you have options for where to buy PC games online.
Happy gaming!
When buying games, I usually keep to a few simple rules. Before picking up a game, check all the stores to make sure you’re getting the best price. Check reviews carefully at Steam because it’s the most open platform when it comes to allowing developers to add their games to its store. However, some gamers don’t like it because they only want to buy their games at one specific store. Epic has managed to land a bunch of exclusives, meaning you can only buy some games at the Epic store.
Thanks for sharing your tips. I’d also add that unless you’re absolutely dying to play a game, don’t pick it up on launch day. Wait for a sale.
The Microsoft Store, which comes installed with Windows, is where you have to go to buy Microsoft-published games, unfortunately it’s by far the worst-designed store of the lot. But at least Microsoft is now putting games that would’ve been Xbox exclusives in the past, such as Forza Horizon 4, on Windows 10. Green Man Gaming is one of the largest key retailers (meaning, as mentioned above, they obtain their codes right from the source and are not a reseller) and often sells Steam keys cheaper than you could get them on Steam. One significant difference with GMG’s model is that when a game goes on sale, the discount is taken out of its 30 percent cut first. If you buy a game for 25 percent off on Steam, Steam still takes 30 percent of the remaining amount of the sale. GMG would only take 5 percent in that case, leaving untouched the full 70 percent cut that would normally go to the developer if the game weren’t on sale.
Thanks for sharing this info, especially about GMG. Good to know.
Watch out for Big Fish Games. Not all games work and if you are in the game club the “tokens” are time-limited and if you don’t use them you lose your money – no refund and they just don’t seem to care.
I agree about not all games working. I only buy games that have been released since 2015 or so. The older the game, the less chance it will run on a modern system.
I’m not sure what you mean by “tokens.” The free game code you get for completing a punch card has an expiry date that’s stated clearly in the email with the code. Since you didn’t pay for the code, you’re not owed a refund if you don’t use it in time. Also, the game credit you get each month doesn’t expire (as far as I know). I’ve used mine months after getting them and have never had a problem. Did you mean something else by “token”?
I have currently accrued 20 game credits at Big Fish. I am switching back to Big Fish and found that games I own but haven’t played in over a year and had not installed on this new laptop downloaded and played just fine. I love knowing that those games are waiting for me. I especially like story-solitaire and the hidden objects series.
I hope you enjoy getting back into your games. In case you’re not aware, later this month the Big Fish game club benefits are changing. If you haven’t spent them already, your credits will be converted into points. It’s all good – the value is equivalent. It actually makes the system a bit more flexible. Also the punch card is going away. You’ll earn points instead.
Happy gaming!
Can i use gameplay for youtube videos ?
To find out if you can use gameplay from a game in a YouTube video, you have to go to the publisher or developer website. Usually there will be a FAQ or a legal statement that will tell you if you’re allowed to make videos using gameplay. They will also tell you if you’re allowed to monetize those videos.