The desire to get the game on the day of its release is perhaps the only good reason to buy it on Steam at full price. But if you are more patient, you can save a lot..
Using the tools described in this article, you can find out where and when sales are taking place, track prices and receive notifications with information about discounts.
When is the next sale?
Steam always has some kind of special offers (weekend sales, daily discounts, etc.). But nothing beats the full version of Massive Sale..
This is a major event that takes place several times a year. Most often, it is at this time that you can buy the game at the lowest price. The platform does not distribute information about the start of sales in advance. But the service uses a fairly predictable schedule. Buyers can use it. This graph is monitored by the WhenIsTheNextSteamSale service .
On the website, you will see a large countdown timer. It shows you when the next big sale will start. For calculations, not only an approximate schedule is used, but also various rumors, as well as other information. The source is not 100% reliable. After all, the timer rarely works on the basis of official information. But the information on the site is pretty accurate. Such a tool cannot be ignored if you want to get a solid discount..
Game Hunters app
Game Hunters monitors dozens of sites for the latest promotions and even giveaways on Steam. Most often there are discounts of 65-80%, but they can reach 99%. Games can be saved in a wishlist or bought immediately. Wishlist is synchronized with Steam.
In the "Promotions" section, keys for Steam, Epic Games Store, Uplay and Origin are handed out for free. When new promotions appear, a push notification arrives. If you wish, you can add some game to the ignore list. The app has easy navigation, filters by price, genre and developers. The interface is in Russian.
You can enter the application and start searching without authorization, without giving the developers any data about yourself at all. But after logging in through Steam, you can sync your favorites, hide discounts on already purchased games and send uninteresting ones to the black list.
Available for Android and iPhone .
Discounts in other countries
The Steam site contains a lot of information: reviews, DLC lists and more, but the site does not contain important data that the service does not plan to add in the near future. For example, you cannot find out where there are better deals. But the Enhanced Steam extension available for all popular browsers will do it. It is compatible with Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Edge.
The extension will tell you how much you can buy the desired game in another country. This is convenient if you have a foreign friend who could pay for the game and transfer it to you. Great deals are also shown in different stores in your country.
Tracking changes in the cost of games
SteamDB service provides detailed information and analytics for many releases. But its most important function is price tracking and selection of the best deals. You can narrow your search results to a specific range of estimates, the exact percentage of the discount. Filters by platform, game genre, tags are also available.
This service is recommended for tracking special offers during big sales, and not for monitoring prices for a single game. Not for everything, official Steam offers great prices. Other sites sell activated games at a much lower price. So you don't need to limit yourself. Maybe you're just wondering what is on sale today? In this case, the service will also come to the rescue.
Finding lower priced sites
If you don't want to install a browser extension, IsThereAnyDeal lets you do without it. This site tracks the prices of games in different stores and shows the history of their changes. You can see which sites are offering the best terms at the moment. Also check how often discounts have appeared in the past. Such monitoring will help determine the resources that are definitely worth looking at from time to time. You can use this data to determine if you should buy now or wait a little longer.
It is possible to import a wishlist from Steam and receive notifications every time a game of interest goes on sale. Choose stores to receive notifications. The site also allows you to specify what kind of discount you want to receive. Notifications will only come when the price of the game decreases by a certain percentage or below a certain amount in dollars.
Don't forget to add games to your wishlist
If we talk about the wishlist, there is still no worthy alternative to the official Steam website. Be sure to use the tools we have presented to save money on buying games. But to form a list of desired releases, it is still better to use Steam. This service will always notify you that the game you have saved on your wishlist is already on sale. It is quite possible that there will be discounts. Isn't it nice to buy a new famous game for just a few dollars?
Of course, this is not the most convenient tool for finding the best deals. There is no price tracking function.