For someone starting PC gaming, it can be daunting at times when searching for games to buy. Unlike the console market, where you have a designated store to buy all your games from, PC gamers have a wide array of options to choose from. So to all the new confused PC gamers out there, I present to you a comprehensive guide to buying games on PC. Before we get starting I just want to say, I’m exclusively talking about digital copies as I have little to no experience with physical copies. With that said, let’s get started.

Where to buy games?

In a perfect utopia, you can buy every game from every retailer. But our digital world doesn’t work like that. It is filled with DRM’s and exclusivity. Let me first explain what those two things are, a DRM is in layman’s term a launcher you run before you launch the game. It authenticates you bought the game every time you launch it, this discourages piracy. Exclusivity is when game publishers decide to release a game only on a specific store (or console) by forming a partnership, or when publishers create their own stores to sell their games exclusively. Let’s look at all our options one-by-one :

Steam : The most popular and well known store made by Valve, the creators of games like Half-Life, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead and Counter-Strike. I would define steam as more of an economy than a store, and deserves a separate blog-post for itself. But keeping it simple, it is a great choice, with very frequent sales and lots of other features like trading, profile customization, and a huge community for your every need.

Epic Games Store: This is the newcomer making a lot of noise. Made by Epic Games, the creators of Fortnite and Unreal Engine, is a store that right now is most know for their weekly free games. As a store, it still could do a lot more. It’s slow at times, the UI needs some work, the profile feature sucks, and the most atrocious crime is not allowing user reviews. So you only see critic review, which as we know (or should know) isn’t the most trust-worthy opinion. A lot of people has a negative opinion on Epic Games, as they bluffly brought exclusivity to the mainstream PC market.

GOG Galaxy : Made by CDPR, makers of the Witcher games and Cyberpunk. GOG stands for “Good Old Games” and was created to preserve, restore and sell old classic titles to the new age. They have the biggest library of old absurd and niche games. But what sets GOG apart is their “NO DRM” stance. That is, if you buy a game from GOG, you get the no strings attached executable file and don’t need GOG to run the game next time, pretty sweet right!? But since this is more prone to piracy, newer publishers tend not to sell their games on there. But there are still a lot of tiles, and their launcher/app is my favorite among all the others. To know why read this post.

Uplay : This is the store for buying games made by Ubisoft. You can buy the majority of Ubisoft games on other stores (Steam and Epic), but as of late, they have started selling their games exclusively on their store, which is unfortunate. The store itself is okay, the only note-worthy thing is, as you buy games (or as you unlock achievements in games bought there) you get “coins”, and after you collect a certain amount, you can redeem them for a 25% off coupon, which is sweet.

Rockstar : Yes, you guessed it. It sells Rockstar tiles, including GTA, Read dead and others. This is probably my least favorite as it is the least polished. It’s pretty bare bones at this time of writing and needs a LOT more work.

Itch-io : Home to the biggest library of free games, Itch-io hosts a free indie games as well as host game jams. It doesn’t have any launcher and is a simple website you can sign up to, to check out Indie titles

Buying Keys

A key is a code you enter in the respective store, which will give you the game in that store. There are stores that sell keys to any of the above stores. Always remember to check for which store you are buying the key for, which will be displayed on the games store page on these websites.They also tend to have some good deals on bundles. They include :

Humble Bundle

Green Man Gaming 

G2A – They also sells keys, but the keys are not properly published by the developers. As they get the keys by shady methods, people (including me) and developers don’t recommend buying from keys from here, as cheap as they may be. Also there is no promise that the key will work. So be warned.

Xbox and PlayStation games on PC 

Xbox has Xbox Gamepass, where you can play its entire (PC) library as long as you have their subscription. Once that ends, so does your access to these games. I have used their survive extensively, and although their launcher app is sometimes buggy and slow, there are making progress and as of writing this post Xbox game pass is well worth the price.

PlayStation has PlayStation Plus, which is a cloud gaming service, i.e. you play on the internet and not actually download the games on your PC. So for this to work smoothly, you need a stable internet connection, but nevertheless will have to face some sort of input lag and stuttering. I have never used this service, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

When to buy games? 

LOOK FOR SALE ! LOOK FOR SALE ! LOOK FOR SALE !

Unlike the console market, PC games are always on sale. Every store I mentioned above has their respective summer, winter, autumn and other festive sales. Furthermore, there are publisher sales and genre sale. So always be patient and your wallet will thank you. To know when the next sale on steam is, you can check – https://steamdb.info/sales/history/ . For other stores, a simple google will give you the answer.

At what price to buy the game?

You will almost always be able to buy the game cheaper than its initial price. There are websites that record the price of games constantly, so you can check their database to see the lowest recorded price and when it went to that price. To check the lowest recorded price, search your game here and go to your respective currency: 

Steam – https://steamdb.info/

GOG – https://www.gogdb.org/

There aren’t such databases for the other stores unfortunately, but always keep an eye out. 

Who to follow for latest sale news?

Everyone likes cheap and free stuff including me. Fortunately for us, PC gaming space is filled with like minded people. So for the latest sale/free game news, I recommend following some or all of these : 

Reddit – r/FreeGameFindings , r/GameDeals

YouTube – Low Budget Gaming (there are plenty on YT, but he is always concise and to the point, which I appreciate)

Steam – Free Game Finders (Steam group you can follow on the steam app)

Bonus

How to manage your digital game library? 

I have made a separate post on cataloging, which explains how you can store all your games from different stores in a central hub and customize them. (Spoiler – I use GOG galaxy app). Read about it HERE. 

Are game giveaways legit?

Yes and no. There are plenty of scams that make you follow their socials in the promise of choosing a winner to send a key to. Apart from that, the legit ones I follow are two subreddits, where people who get multiple copies of the same game or someone who just want to spread a bit of kindness come and gift them to people. 

These are – r/RandomActsOfGaming and r/GiftofGames