Giveaway of the Day Forums

1. 

   Anonymous
   Unregistered

   Steam is easily the best platform out there for PC gamers right now and when it comes time for the Steam Sales, everyone rejoices. However, Steam doesn't own the market on deeply discounted PC games and you may even be able to get better deals outside Steam (crazy, I know).
   Amazon

   Beyond Steam: The Best Places to Find Deals on PC Games
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   How to Keep Your Overflowing Steam Library Neatly Organized

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   As surprising as it may be, Steam isn't the only software out there for managing your gaming library. Amazon actually has a pretty killer system hiding on its site that allows you to re-download all the games you've ever purchased through the company as many times as you want. Alternatively, you can copy the purchase key, paste it into Steam, and download the game via Steam as if you had bought it there—but with the price you get on Amazon.
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   You'd be forgiven for thinking that Steam has a corner on the cheap video games market, but Amazon actually has some pretty great sales from time to time. Not only does Amazon offer regular daily and weekly deals, but on occasion you can find high-end AAA games for cheaper than Steam, even during the coveted Steam Sales. In fact, during the most recent Summer Sale, Amazon had Bioshock Infinite—a relatively new AAA title—for less than Steam did during its sale.
   Humble Bundles and Indie Galas

   Beyond Steam: The Best Places to Find Deals on PC Games

   The Humble Bundles and Indie Galas are also huge sources for awesome sales and steeply discounted games. While the former tends to stick to dishing out Steam keys, it's possible to activate them on Steam, install them to your computer, and then add them to a service like Desura or just run them with regular shortcuts if you aren't a Steam fan. In fact, Humble Bundle even added a feature recently that will activate your keys on Steam for you so you don't have to copy keys over and add games manually.

   Both of them work on the pay-what-you-want model. You can get whole packages of games for as little as a dollar but, if you pay more than the average (usually between $4-10), you can unlock extra games. While these are frequently geared towards independent developers, you can sometimes find major AAA titles (for example, right now you can get Arkham Asylum and Arkham City plus a few other games for less than $5).
   Green Man Gaming

   Beyond Steam: The Best Places to Find Deals on PC Games

   Green Man Gaming is another extremely popular deal site and for good reason. They frequently have pretty steep discounts above and beyond what Steam offers. For example, right now you can get 25% off Batman: Arkham Origins bringing the price down from $50 everywhere else to about $37.50. For a game that was only released a couple weeks ago, that's not too shabby.
   Good Old Games (Gog.com)

   Beyond Steam: The Best Places to Find Deals on PC Games
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   While you won't find a ton of modern AAA titles on this site, Gog.com has a ton of older classics that you can't get anywhere else, and usually for pretty cheap. The site also includes user reviews that will frequently tell you how well it plays on modern systems. If you can't find a copy of that Windows 98 game you loved as a kid, you can probably find it here.
   GameFly

   Beyond Steam: The Best Places to Find Deals on PC Games

   For consoles, GameFly is a bit like Netflix in that it will allow you to rent discs on a subscription basis. However, PC gamers can also find some pretty steep discounts on downloadable titles. They even activate on Steam. Life couldn't get much more convenient for Valve-devotees.

   Steam is generally accepted to be one of the best platforms out there for finding sweet deals on PC games, and with good reason—Steam's sales are among the best. However, you don't have to wait around for the skies to part in order to get cheap games year-round. Put a few of these other stores into your search (Kotaku's Moneysaver column is a great place to monitor them all), and you'll expand your deal-finding quite a bit (even if you eventually end up importing those games into Steam).

   article plus good visuals

   Posted 11 years ago #
2. 

   Whiterabbit-uk
   Games Guru

   I will nearly always forgo the saving on a game just to get it on Steam, simply because of the advantages; i.e being able to install the game on any computer so long as I sign in and confirm via email that its me that's wanting to download and play the game, my games are always kept up to date and I can associate any strategy guides with that game, plus I've grown to love all of the other things Steam can do, including the community aspect, the market and the ability to connect to friends easily. The ability to organize your games isn't as good as I'd like (I'd like to see nested categories); however, it's still the best out there.

   If you are willing to wait for the main sales, I think its extremely hard to beat any Steam price (maybe the odd one and then only pennies. Greenman gaming have had some excellent offers as have Gamersgate and Desura. (I don't count the indie Bundles, though for any gamer who can't afford to buy most games they are amazing). Thankfully most other game clients sell Steam works games (apart for maybe Origin), so I will buy from them if its cheaper than Steam and I get a steam key into the bargain.

   That said, its a matter of preference, and for many, their wallets that'll dictate where they purchase from.

   Several years ago prior to my accident (Sept 2005), I didn't own one digital game. All my games were hard copies and I would never have imagined purchasing a digital copy. My thoughts were, it's not real, plus I didn't trust some of the sites you could purchase them from (This was later confirmed when Amazon bought out Reflexive games - I'd purchased nearly 900 arcade games from Reflexive over a period of about 18 months each costing $19.99 - they gave the Reflexive community several months to install any game that had been purchased from Reflexive, then the servers were shut down. The problem with Reflexive games is that once you upgrade your computer, or buy another one, the registration code you have for the game no longer works; basically it's tied to the computer configuration, so you have to apply for a new code. Reflexive had set up a simple but effective DRM system, but once the servers were shut down you could no longer activate the games. I was furious as I'd spent over $17 000 on my arcade games. Thankfully I found one of those illegal activation generators, though it took me over a year after the close down).

   I was sort of forced to go digital when I became house bound following my accident. I used to go to my local games store directly from work every week to pick up the latest releases. Following my accident I did buy hard copies from places like Game.uk via the post, but I seemed to get loads of duds which meant they had to be shipped back for a replacement. That's when I discovered the world of digital gaming. Now I buy virtually all of my games digitally. To be honest I wouldn't have the shelf space for all of my games if they were all hard copies as I have thousands of them. (The hard copies i do have fill loads of shelf space already. i have to store some in boxes as there's no room. I only installed Steam just under 5 years ago as I'd avoided getting into Half Life 2. I did buy the orange box shortly after its release, but never opened it until I had to install Steam back in January 2009 after buying two games (Defense Grid: The Awakening and Galactic Bowling) from Direct to Drive. At the time of purchase I'd not picked up on what steam-works meant. When I tried to install both games it said I needed Steam. I wasn't pleased as I didn't like game clients, much preferring to have DRM free games if possible. Anyway, I installed it as I really wanted to play both games. Within weeks I wondered why I'd been so against clients. Within several weeks I'd purchased over 30 games via the weekly sales. The rest is history.

   :)

   Posted 11 years ago #

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