
- #PLACES TO BUY CHEAP STEAM GAMES MANUALS#
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EA is particularly fond of this approach. However, many flagship franchises are only available by going through them. Itch.ioįirst-party services like Ubisoft’s uPlay, EA’s Origin, and Blizzard’s are limited in that they primarily carry products from one publisher and don’t often feature sales as significant as other retailers. Like Steam, GOG takes a 30 percent cut on sales of games not made by one of its studios.
#PLACES TO BUY CHEAP STEAM GAMES MANUALS#
Most also include PDFs of the original manuals and box art, and often the original soundtrack in a DRM-free file format, which can be even harder to find than the games themselves. GOG also has a wide selection of classic games, some of which have never been available on Steam or anywhere else online, and they’re all optimized and tested to run fairly hassle-free on modern hardware-which may not be the case with a CD-ROM copy you bought when the Spice Girls were on a roll.
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You can download Wing Commander 3 on your office computer, copy it to an external hard drive, take it to a bunker at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean with no internet access, load it up on a Windows 98-powered, off-the-shelf tower from a department store that doesn’t exist anymore, and you won’t be hassled about logging in or verifying anything. Their claim to fame is that everything on their storefront is DRM-free. GOG is owned by CD Projekt, the parent company of the studio responsible for the Witcher games and Cyberpunk 2077. A reseller works with third-party keyholders and often has limited ability to determine where the keys come from. The former, such as Fanatical, gets their keys directly from publishers, so there is usually no question that they are legitimate. The important thing to note here is the difference between a retailer and a reseller. If it is found that the key you bought was obtained illegally, a chargeback on a stolen card could lead to your key being revoked and the developer taking a financial hit.
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Resellers also don’t give a cut to the developers, just like GameStop doesn’t cut From Software a check if they resell your used copy of Dark Souls on console. The prices are often much better than even Steam’s most generous sales, but you run the risk of supporting shady black marketeers if you’re not careful-especially if they seem to be offering a lot of “too good to be true” deals on newer games. The key you bought could just be an extra copy someone got from a bundle of a game they already own, but it’s also entirely possible that it was purchased illegally using a compromised account or stolen credit card info. Most of these sites also don’t have any sort of vetting process for new sellers, and only investigate illegal activity after an issue arises and has been reported by a concerned customer or developer. The issue there is that there isn’t an airtight way of vetting where the resellers that use these sites as a listing service got those keys, just like it can be difficult to determine whether or not the bike you’re looking at on Craigslist was jacked from a community college two counties away.

A person or group who have somehow come into possession of Steam keys that haven’t been activated can post them on a reseller site at a price of their choosing, keeping most of the profit (minus a percentage and a small listing fee to the site). Key resellers, like G2A and Kinguin, are a bit different in that they operate almost like a flea market. Steam gives out batches of keys directly to publishers and developers who can then sell them to you. While the most straightforward way of getting such a key is by buying a game directly from Steam (in which case you don't need to enter a key), it’s not the only way. What about other stores that sell Steam keys?Įvery game you buy on Steam has an associated, one-time-use key that unlocks it for play. That’s not unusual or excessive, necessarily, but there are other ways to obtain many games that give more support directly to the developer if you care to do so. Steam also takes a 30 percent cut of all sales. Valve’s efforts to curate the storefront have been largely hands-off and lacklustre, allowing large numbers of low-quality games to make it onto the store.

It also has so many games on it at this point that it can be hard to find those gems that are really worth playing but don’t enjoy the backing of a major publisher or marketing team among all the noise.


What are the drawbacks? Well, Steam uses an in-house DRM that forces you to launch a game in online mode before you can play it offline, and allows third-party DRM from publishers who sell their games on Steam that may require an always-on connection.
