My BestBuy Gamer's Club Unlocked Membership is ending in November. This means I'll have to go back to paying a full $60 price tag for new games. It was a fun four years of effectively paying $45 per game, but that is ending. 

As consoles have gotten more complex they have become a little more prone to wear and tear. This isn't that big of a deal, but the PS4 definitely isn't going to be usable in say 2040. Modern consoles are not SNES level durable. A good way to extend the life of my PS5 would be to play most 3rd party games on PC. Sony almost always makes a 2nd model of their console halfway through that is the better version. They also tend to have a slow release of exclusives the first two years. So not getting a PS5 until 2022 makes a lot of sense. 

I like playing on PC. I like a lot of the PC exclusives. I'm a total 4X nut. I'll be building a 3900X rig eventually. And if I'm going to blow that kind of money on a CPU, why not get a 2070S? 

But there's just one fly in the ointment...

Non-Sale Steam Prices for games are ridiculous! Here's a lot of 2017's games and their current prices for comparison.

Neir Automata $40 on Steam vs $40 at Best Buy (Both are currently on sale for $24)

X-Com 2 Collection $132.95 on Steam vs $40 at Best Buy (Currently on sale on Steam for $34)

Nioh $50 on Steam vs $20 at Best Buy

Injustice 2 $49.99 on Steam vs $30 at Best Buy

Wolfenstein 2 $60 on Steam vs $40 at Best Buy

Yakuza 0 $20 on Steam vs $20 at Best Buy

Resident Evil 7 $60 on Steam vs $30 at Best Buy

Final Fantasy 12 Zodiac Age $50 on Steam vs $20 at Best Buy

Assassin's Creed Origins $60 on Steam vs $40 at Best Buy

Hellbalde $30 on Steam vs $30 at Best Buy

Yakuza Kiwami $20 on Steam vs $30 at Best Buy

Even if we throw in XCom 2's $34 sale price as part of the average, all the Steam games from 2017, on this list, cost $43 on average. Meanwhile the same games from Best Buy for PS4 cost $27 on average. $43 vs $27! Again, these games are all from 2017. Let that sink in! BTW I picked this list of games by going to Opencritic and just picking games from the top to the bottom. I just went down the list for the most part until I got bored. 

Anyway, it's pretty apparent that for many companies like Square Enix, Capcom, Koei Techmo, Ubisoft, etc., the regular Steam Price of a game is just a B.S. listing made to get you to jump whenever a sale happens. XCom 2 is the best example of this. LOLOLOLOL THIS WOULD COST YOU $134 hurr durr durr! So you'd better buy it right now while it's on sale! DURR HURR!!!

But I don't want to be at the mercy of a sale! I would rather just buy my games when I want to at a fair price! Its bad enough that stuff gets delayed for PC, or becomes an EGS exclusive for a year. These are games that have cut the middleman of a Brick and Mortar Store out of the loop. There's no shipping costs to pay. Yet they are somehow 40% more expensive at regular sticker price? 

Most of these games can be had for even less used on PS4. They retain value after you buy them. 

Why the heck can't Steams pricing be more like Nintendo's digital pricing? You pay $100 for two game passes, and then get 5% back in Gold Coins. So you are paying $47.50 for digital versions of Switch games. That's pretty fair IMO. But NOOOoo! Steam has to be special! There has to be fake, B.S. pricing that isn't anywhere near what the developer intends to sell the game for! 

P.S. Key Reseller sites are not an answer. I prefer to support devs rather than ripping them off, and making them deal with CC chargebacks. 

/rant

Never buy on Steam if there are cheaper alternatives on GOG (or others, GOG has the additional benefit of no DRM, reducing possible problems and incompatibilities and leaving the game working forever, even if store and publisher cease to exist, although IIRC, Steam promises to deal better than competitors with this issue, should it happen) or on physical copies either online or on physical stores.

I buy on GoG if at all possible. Even games that also happen to come out for PS4. I don't mind going digital, so long as I am offered fair prices, and no DRM. 

Edit: Hell, I'll even take the mild DRM of Steam. Just give me consistent and fair prices. None of this JC Penny Pricing nonsesnse! Price the games at what you intend to sell them at!

Steam doesn't set the prices for all those games, that's down to the devs and publishers themselves. This means that SE, and all the other pubs, think that NA, a game that's two and a half years old, is still worth $40, but hey, I see this with all the Japanese games listed on Steam, because Japan, like Nintendo, doesn't like "devaluing" their games (for some greedy reason I'm sure).

I either wait for a sale, or I simply use third party key sites like GMG, which even end up offering me a better deal than what I'd find on Steam, or even during a sale.

Steam sales stopped being fun after they got rid of flash and daily sales, mostly because of devs not making as much during said sales, because you'd end up getting games for such an amazing deal. Now it's the same sort of sale that every other games client offers, as well as consoles in some regards.

Just look for third party key sites, and clients like GoG as well.

If you want to point the finger at someone, do it at the greedy publishers.

Also, as a side note to EGS exclusivity deals, I can assure you that when those games do come to Steam, the devs/pubs will be asking full price. THis will especially be the case for Borderlands 3, and that won't even come with all the DLC trimmings either. 

First, personally speaking, I never want to deal with buying "points" or "gold coins" or whatever again. I pay money directly and I get a product in return, that's what I want.

Second, this rant doesn't make much sense. The publisher sets the price, not Steam.

Retail price drops are often the result of retailers needing to move stock, not publisher intentions.  Retail has factors that apply only because the product is in physical form--digital conforming to the same structure and rules would be from emulation, not necessity.  If you want to complain to someone about digital prices, complain to specific publishers.

Lastly, since sales happen constantly and all I need to do is put a game on my wishlist to get a notification, not just from Steam but also other online distributors, I don't have much problem with this.  

I did point out that the publishers are to blame. "Anyway, it's pretty apparent that for many companies like Square Enix, Capcom, Koei Techmo, Ubisoft, etc., the regular Steam Price of a game is just a B.S. listing made to get you to jump whenever a sale happens."

GoG all the way. 

I wouldn't bother with a key reseller site unless I was 100% sure that the dev isn't getting screwed over in some way.

I've never been screwed over by GMG for years. It's scummy as hell key seller sites like G2A you want to watch out for. 

You can use GMG to grab Steam keys, or even keys for clients like Uplay as well.

I'm not going to stop using Steam because a few greedy af publishers want more money for doing less. I'd rather just use one of Steam's amazing features, and slap those publishers/games on my ignore/block list and instead focus on other games that offer me better value and content. No other client(that I know of) seems to offer such an amazing feature, and it also helps me to avoid temptation of buying a game, I wasn't intending to buy, as well as filtering out genres I don't want to see (like Turn based strat games). 

Then wait for sales. They come around pretty often. Just setup a wishlist with the games you consider too expensive to buy right now and when a sale comes around you'll be notified. Do that and you'll find yourself with more games than you have time to play in no time.

Steam has sales frequently. So just wait on them.

There are outlets which often sell Steam keys at a discount price too... Like Greenmangaming and often Humble Store, so keep an eye on those.
Amazon, Newegg, Ebay, Gamestop, Bestbuy and so on can be good outlets to get cheap steam keys.

If you don't mind deviating away from Steam... You have uPlay (Eww), Origin (meh), Direct2Drive, Gamersgate, Windows Store (Eww) and so on...

There is also https://slickdeals.net/video-game-deals/ if you want a database of where the cheapest games are... In short, there is no reason to ever buy a PC game at full price.

PS4 in 2040?!?!.....Hope you have gills to play underwater. I feel nothing for your plight. Nothing. In fact, I think I'm gonna go donate to Jessica Yaniv's patreon and sniff some glue to cleanse my palette.


















Ahhh, you're alright. :)