I am not a wealthy person by any stretch of the imagination. Yet I own a staggering amount of video games on Valve's Steam platform and on some other sites. Not only do I own a lot of games for myself, I have also provided my family with many games. I have done this by looking for deals, and being patient. I am going to share some tricks on purchasing video games for the PC here.

PC Master Race

Before we get too far: I no longer purchase consoles or games for consoles. I am one of that sometimes snobbish l33t group that considers ourselves the PC Master Race. I therefore, will not be able to help all the various console owners that are reading this. All I can tell you is YES a PC can set you back quite a bit but even a $600 PC can be built that will play any game on the market(Except VR ones as the VR equipment price needs to be added too). YES once you buy a game for the PC you likely will be able to keep playing that game forever, even when you upgrade your PC. YES when you get down to this fact there are a massive amount of games for the PC. More than any console can come close to. YES you can often play even better games simply by swapping out a part, rather than tossing the entire thing out and starting over. YES you can hook up a controller and play it just like a console. YES you can stream it to a TV or other device and have it act just like a console. NO it is not a closed system, so some PC configurations will play games differently. NO it is not a closed system so you yourself can screw up your PC by the habits and how you use it.

Digital Platforms

There are quite a number of digital platforms/storefronts for acquiring games. These include things like Valve's Steam Platform, EA's Origin, Ubisoft, GOG.com, and many others. I resisted the idea of going digital much to my loss. One Christmas a friend of mine said he was going to give me the Valve Complete pack on Steam. I happened to go look. Wow, a lot of game for $40. The Steam Christmas Sale happened to be going on and I saw the prices and the sheer quantity of games at low prices. I was hooked. Once I started building up a library I actually started buying games I had physical copies of when the price was low. I began loathing the idea of a physical copy. I no longer had to go dig through boxes, spools of CDs/DVDs, when I wanted to determine what I was going to play. I used to spend hours trying to find things. Now I spend less than a minute. Digital makes the old method highly unappealing and I was resistant.

So some people may say that Steam sucks and Origin is better. Actually, I strongly disagree. Valve does not force people to make the sales they do. The prices on steam are set by the developers and publishers. They do provide suggestions in some cases, but the developers/publishers do not need to follow them. Just like any store front they take a percentage (margin) to sell in their store. This is how all stores work, they cannot function otherwise. The amount they take is not more than the typical store. In some cases it is less, and in some cases it may be more. As with any market there is competition. I will not however endorse Origin. In fact I have a strong dislike of the Origin platform and in general of EA. What you get with Steam is arguably the largest PC game market in the world operated by a rather unique company in Valve. I am also a frequent visitor to GOG.COM which is a great place to get classics, and all of their games actually come as DRM free (no-copy protection) downloadable installer variants. They are owned and operated by another interesting company/developer CDProjekt (Makers of The Witcher series). Steam and GOG will be my focus for the remainder of this post.

Patience

The key to owning a lot of games for a lot less money is patience. If you believe you need to pre-order games, and you need to buy games the day they come out then some of my tips will help you, but not as much as they would otherwise. I am going to be telling you how for a fraction of the cost of that ONE title you think you need to have right now you can have more titles than you can keep up with. You eventually will get those titles too, but at a lower price and you'll likely actually get games far faster than you can possibly play them. If a lot of games is not your goal then how about just spending less money to keep your current game acquiring pace going? Use these tricks and you'll do that.

Here are the tips I use for Steam itself:

• Don't buy games at new release prices. Have patience. I will have plenty to play. Determine a natural cut off price for yourself. For me I tend to never spend more than $24.99 per game on myself, though most are far less than that. In very rare cases I'll buy a game at a higher price, but I never pay $60 for a game.
• Check the daily sale on Steam. They are put up the same time every day. This a 11am Mountain Time (UTC-7) for me.
• Each week a new list of games go on sale on Mondays. I check that list. Because it is getting so big I tend to add things to my wishlist and each Monday see if something on my wishlist is on sale.
• Discount amount. It is again up to you to set an amount you go by. I tend to only buy things when they are on sale with a 50% discount or more. That is my personal choice.
• Other sales will happen midweek and are usually called midweek madness, and will include a few games and you can usually see that advertisement at the top of the screen somewhere. There will also be a weekend deal of some kind. These are things I pay attention to and check.
• Save money for two (or more) major sales on Steam per year. It used to be there would be a big sale within the weeks before Christmas, and another usually in June or July. This is still the case, but it can also be joined by some other big sales around Thanksgiving, and possibly other dates. The thing to maximize your money as far as steam goes is to save for these sales. More things than you can possibly imagine get massive sales during these times. For that one $60 game you think you simply must have now, I can end up with 20 to 50 games using my habits. I also have the big major titles. I simply did not play them on release day.

The SPECIALS tab

Click on the See More button for specials tab.

Sort it by Lowest Price - work your way up

Use your wishlist to speed this up and help you notice when things you want go on sale and drop to a price you are willing to pay. Have patience...

NOTE: These screenshots are from today, just an ordinary day. During the major sales the prices are pure madness.

GOG.COM - Good Ol' Games:
GOG.COM is another good site. It is a different library. I tend to use it more for older titles I can't find other places, but I've begun to actually buy more there simply because they made some changes.

• Like Steam, GOG has weekly sales. They have a much smaller library, but it is worth keeping an eye on. Yet they also have titles that are hard to find anywhere else (mostly old classics).
• Also link your STEAM account to GOG CONNECT and at points around the year GOG will give you select games for free on GOG if you already own them on Steam. This is ultimately what finally made me start actually purchasing titles at GOG.

On Sale tab for GOG.com

GOG Connect - sometimes you get free games on GOG if you already own them on a linked Steam account.

Using just those techniques you can get A LOT more games than you've been getting, or get the same amount of games and just save money.

Game Keys

Steam is a store front, yet it does provide a way for game makers to provide keys. These can be provided so that they can sell the game on other locations. This happens with reputable locations like Amazon.com and many others. It is not uncommon to get game keys and be able to activate them on Steam.

As such there are other locations where you can buy game keys that can be activated on Steam for substantial discounts. If you get them as part of a bundle these discounts can be truly massive.

This is NOT being done against the will of the developer's and publishers. They are approached and agree to these deals.

There are reseller sites where people who bought game keys or acquired them in other ways will put them on a list to resell them there. Those sites can be viewed as questionable as they often do this by damaging ways. I will discuss this in a moment when I tell you sites to avoid.

In this section I want to talk to you about the places I visit to find amazing games on Steam games that are endorsed by the developers and publishers of those games.

These are the sites I visit regularly:
www.humblebundle.com - is perhaps the first, or close to the first place to be offering bundles. They give a portion of the proceeds to charity. Their game bundles tend to be very high quality. They also have begun a program called Humble Monthly which for $12 a month (or less depending upon months you sign up for) offers a truly awesome bundle once a month. I am a subscriber and so far I can say it greatly exceeds the cost of $12 in terms of the quality of titles it provides.

They have deals ongoing, they don't happen as fast as some sites, but generally they are always high quality bundles.

Humble Monthly has so far been amazing packs for a very low price.

www.bundlestars.com - Has some awesome bundles, and seems to have the largest quantity of ongoing bundles of any place. The bundles vary in quality, but it is very obvious what each bundle is so you simply research what is in the bundle and determine if you want it or not. There are some awesome bundles on this site. It is one of my personal favorites.

They have a store as do most of these bundle sites as well as having bundles.

What you see when you click on BUNDLES at the top of the screen.

An example of just one of those bundles. For $2.99.

www.indiegala.com - Has a monday, and friday bundle every week and usually throws some other bundles in for the mix.

The front page. Yes they also have a store.

An example of a bundle for $3.49. Not always the highest in names for games, but often some fun things to play. They can help you be able to be patient and tide you over until something you REALLY want comes down in price.

www.groupees.com - Has some good bundles and often mixes in other media besides just games. The guys running this are really nice people, as I've spoken to one of them when they wanted to know if I wanted to include my game in a greenlight bundle before it had been greenlit to see if that could help it get greenlit faster. I did not do this and it took 600+ days for my game to get greenlit. They did offer though, and some people do go this route. I do know some people that consider this their favorite bundle site. They do more than games.

The front page.

An example of a bundle.

isthereanydeal.com - is kind of like an aggregator or way to search for game deals. It also has a special section which keeps a running list of bundles that are active at all of the above sites and others I did not list here. I have bought at one time or another from all of the sites that are covered here with no problems. They do not seem to cover the questionable areas.

The front page

Clicking on the ALL Specials tab. This will show you all the active bundles they know of here, and a few other things. IsThereAnyDeal.com is also useful for searching for a specific title to see what sale prices at various sites they currently are aware of including Steam itself.

Those sites which I have described in detail are safe and endorsed by the developers and publishers. There are some questionable sites though that you should know about as well.

Avoid These Places

There are some other areas where people who are not one of these stores that has an agreement with developers and publishers list and sell game keys. These can be keys purchased with stolen credit cards, acquired by lying about being a game review magazine or youtube person, etc. You can end up seeing some very high dollar games for sale on such sites. G2A.com used to be where I saw this the most. Yet they may be attempting to clean up their image. If you want to know more about this you should read an article from Gamasutra by a game developer/publisher, Lars Doucet, that talks about these places. He actually would prefer you pirate his game rather than purchase it from places that resell keys purchased with stolen credit cards, or acquired in other dishonest ways.

Conclusion

I am a game developer myself. I just told you how to get games for very low prices. This includes my own. I do not believe I need to artificially inflate the market or act like a cartel and lock prices in at a certain level. I do not believe I am devaluing my intellectual property. What price I sell things at, and what bundles or key selling places I make deals with is totally up to me. I am knowingly making such decisions. I am also a gamer and not wealthy though so I have maximized my techniques for legally acquiring massive amounts of games. I have far more than I can ever play and actually kind of consider myself a COLLECTOR at this point. I also buy bundles and keep keys for myself, give others to family members, etc. If it is a hidden object or farming game it likely goes to my wife unless she already has it.

I hope this was useful information for some of you. This is my opinion and there are PC Gamers, and certainly console gamers that will disagree with me.

Steem, Steam, and GOG On!