Gamer’s Discount Guide: Never Pay Full Price Again
Use these 5 simple ways to save your hard-earned cash
2018 is certainly shaping up to be a fantastic year for video-game enthusiasts, with a plethora of both original and recurring titles that should have little trouble keeping us busy all year long.
To complement all of these new releases, we’ve gathered some resources that can help you drastically reduce costs and get that much more bang per buck when buying games.
Check out these sites below, and never pay full price for a game again!
First Thing’s First: HOW MUCH IS THE GAME WORTH?
The first thing you want to do when purchasing a new game is finding out how much is it actually worth.
Video games tend to lose a lot of value based on several criteria, such as its publisher, popularity, and how long has it been on the market for. Some games are very resilient towards price reductions (Call of Duty franchise, GTA V), while others need only weeks before they end up in the bargain bin.
The only way to find out, however, is using a price tracking website. Finding out the cheapest price a game has ever been sold for gives us a fantastic frame of reference as to how much should we pay for it.
As an example, the site featured on the left shows you a variety of different retailers with their current — in addition to their historically lowest — prices for the game Injustice 2.
Finding out which retailer is the cheapest is already beneficial for us, however the value train needs not to stop there. Looking at the lowest price gives us a ballpark amount of how much we should actually spend on game — most of the time, sales are frequent and recurring, and little patience goes a long way towards great savings.
If you’re ever unsure, simply input the name of the game into any of the freely available price trackers available online, which include:
It’s important to note that not all price trackers list every retailer, so it might be best to check out more than one site. Now that we know how much the game we wish to buy is actually worth, it’s time to go shopping!
/r/GameDeals
This subreddit is probably my favorite source of video-game deal aggregation on the net. Although Reddit’s UI and general aesthetic can be daunting for newcomers, this is without a doubt one of the best places to find great bargains.
The deals are listed as links in the following format:
[Store Name] Deal Information (Price/percent off)
If a deal is expired, it will most likely be crossed out to avoid confusion. As for why is this site better than others, here are a few points based on my own experience with the subreddit:
- You can trust it: This is not an easy thing to say about anything on the internet, but you have to give credit where it’s due: the moderators are strict and fair, ensuring that each post adheres to the subreddit’s high standards. In addition, the site does not allow unauthorized resellers, which means that you can generally trust whatever deals are present on the front page at any given time.
- Community driven: Much like every subreddit, /r/gamedeals is driven first and foremost by its community: passionate gamers not unlike you and I. You can rest assured that if there’s a great deal out there, it will not get unnoticed. Aside from deals, you can find interesting discussion and buying experience on nearly every single sale.
- Community representatives: /r/GameDeals has gotten big enough to garner the attention of community representatives from retailers such as Amazon, among others. These representatives usually discuss their site’s various deals with the community, take feedback, and give hints on upcoming sales. The rules of the site ensure that their interaction with the community is as transparent as possible, which is a big plus.
Humble Bundle
Humble Bundle has come a long way ever since its inception in 2010. Their unique business model lets users pick and choose the price on a pre-selected bundle of games (of varying qualities), with the added bonus of having considerable amount of the proceedings go to charity!
This unique model has since expanded to include a regular store with frequent sales and competitive prices. In addition, they’ve since expanded into other interesting avenues such as audio books, e-books, and comics books.
For gamers, these are Humble Bundle’s main selling points:
- A Monthly Bundle starting at $12, which offers between 8–10 games of various genres. In a typical bundle, between 2–3 games are from big studios, while the rest are indie (which does not,of course, imply that they’re less good!)
- Pay What You Want Bundles: You can pay as low as 1$ to get the basic Bundle with Steam keys. Having said that, you’re also given the option to pay a few more dollars to unlock even more games and rewards. As an added bonus, you can distribute your purchase between the charity, developers and HumbleBundle’s staff as you see fit: if you want the entire proceedings from your purchase to go towards charity, you’re more than welcome to do so.
- Online Shop: HumbleBundle also offers a more traditional online shop with everything that one would expect: frequent deals and sales, a robust catalog, and occasional freebies. There seems to be a greater emphasis on indie games, which is welcome.
- Free Games: Every once in a while a free, often well-received game will become purchasable for the low-low price of zero dollars ($0) for a limited time. It’s always worth scoping these out whenever available
SEASONAL SALES
If you’ve taken so much as a minute to browse any of the sites listed above, you’d instantly notice that video games go on a sale extremely frequently. It makes sense, given that no physical copies are being sent, as it means that supply is effectively endless.
For this reason alone, it’s nearly never worth buying a game at full price; there are usually discounts even for newly released games, albeit modest ones (typically between 5%-10%).
Seasonal sales are the apex of such discounts, typically providing the steepest discounts and the widest selection of games. Some retailers (think Steam) even add additional incentives in the form of collectible cards and other meta-games to sweeten the pot and really tie the entire event together.
Although the dates for said sales are never set in stone, the fact that they’re seasonal gives us a pretty good ballpark as for when to expect them. Below are the different types of sales which are usually present in most major online retailers:
- Summer/Winter Sales: The big-daddy of sales, this event typically take place around June and lasts for a couple of weeks.
- Autumn/Spring Sale: Smaller in scope than their big brothers and don’t always show up. Usually begins around November and April, respectively.
- Publisher Sales: These type of sales happen every couple of months or so with a different publisher. They’re are impossible to predict but, like the other major sales, offer the steepest discounts for their respective franchises.
- Holiday Sales: You can typically count on a sale whenever there’s a holiday coming up. These include: Lunar New Year, Halloween, and Black Friday.
WISHLISTS
Patience is a virtue. Often times, we’ve got our eyes on a sleek new game we’d like to play, but are otherwise in no rush to buy it at its current price point. For this reason Wishlists were created on many popular digital distributors, allowing you to get a personal notification by email whenever a game on your list goes on sale.
This allows you not only to keep track of any special discounts towards your favorite games, but also to share with your friends in hopes receiving one as a gift. After all, a gift is basically the best type of discount.
Now that you have all the necessary resources, there’s nothing stopping you from getting those sweet-sweet savings. Got any suggestions to improve this list? Want to share with us a particularly good deal? RT us at Simplay, and lets get gaming!
