How, where and when to find cheap PC games
Steam sales dates, price trackers, and play new releases via Game Pass
In terms of sheer volume of games, the PC has no equal, with an unmatched number of indie games, strategy games, and a back-catalogue dating back through the decades, from Doom95 to DOOM: The Dark Ages.
Over the past few years even Sony and Microsoft have been bringing their once-exclusive PlayStation and Xbox games to the ol' mouse and keyboard machine.
Best of all, you've so much choice about where to buy your games that you can grab yourself endless gaming bargains (if you know where to look). We're here to show you how to find PC games on the cheap (and if you want to go a step further and pay NOTHING for premium PC games, then head over to our free PC games guide).
This guide covers PC only. But don't worry, because we've got every games platform covered on MSE. To find cheap games on other gaming platforms, head over to our respective guides:
This is the first incarnation of this guide. If you have any feedback or tips, let us know in the cheap PC games forum thread, or at gamingfeedback@moneysavingexpert.com.
Look out for the next Steam sale
Steam is the original digital gaming platform and storefront on PC. Over the years it's grown out into a community hub, mod workshop, games library, and digital storefront all in one, and is (unofficially) to PC what PlayStation Store is to Sony or the eShop is to Nintendo.
As such, Steam sales should be one of the biggest events on the frugal gamer's calendar. Alongside various small sales throughout the year based around specific genres, themes, or publishers (we've set up filters to show what games you can grab for under £4 and under £7 at any given time), Steam hosts a number of regular annual sales which it announces well in advance via the Steamworks Development news hub.
But to save you clicking through all the sale announcements yourself, here's a table of past and upcoming Steam sales so you can know when to expect future ones:
2023 | 2024 | 2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|
Spring Sale | 16 to 23 March | 14 to 21 March | 13 to 20 March |
Summer sale | 29 June to 13 July | 27 June to 11 July | 26 June to 10 July |
Autumn sale | 21 to 28 November | 27 November to 4 December | 29 September to 6 October |
Halloween sale | 26 October to 2 November | 28 October to 4 November | [NOW ON] 27 October to 3 November |
Winter sale | 21 December to 4 January | 19 December to 2 January | 18 December to 5 January |
Shop around outside of Steam
Even if you want to play a game on Steam doesn't mean you need to buy the game from Steam. You can buy Steam games from legit third-party sites like Greenmangaming, Fanatical, Humble, or dozens of others, which get their keys directly from publishers and official distributors.
You can also buy games DRM-free through GOG.com, or through first-party publisher platforms like Ubisoft Connect, Xbox, Blizzard.net, Epic Games Store, or EA Play. The catch with these is that you'll need to play these games through the publishers' platforms, not Steam, which means downloading extra apps and missing out on various Steam conveniences like integrated mod support, family sharing, and remote play.
So while buying physical games on PC is a thing of the past, pricing remains very competitive and discounts very frequent because you have dozens of digital stores setting their own prices.
Track prices via IsThereAnyDeal
Instead of going to each individual website to find the best price for the game you want, you can compare its price at all digital retailers in one place with IsThereAnyDeal.
This is the most robust gaming price tracker across all platforms – it's always up to date, highly customisable, and covers every legitimate digital store that you can buy PC games from.
Just type your game in, set the threshold you want its price to hit – you can specify prices, percentage price drops, or even 'historical low' prices to ensure you're getting the best possible deal – then add it to your waitlist so you get notified when it hits that target.
Is There Any Deal will tell you if a game is part of a bundle at a given moment, a subscription (such as Game Pass or Humble Choice), or maybe even being given away for free on the Giveaways page as part of a promotion.
You can also use the price history and sales distribution graphs to see a game's overall price trend and frequency with which it goes on sale, giving you an idea of when to expect the next one.
Set alerts on HotUKDeals
HotUKDeals isn't technically a price tracker, instead users post deals that others upvote or downvote – the higher the ‘heat’, the better the deal. It has a section dedicated to gaming, and you can set filters specifically for PC or Steam games (we've combined the two filters into one search here).
Once the heat hits a few hundred degrees, that's a strong indicator that you're looking at an excellent price for the game in question (though you can also search for that game in the HUKD search bar to see previous user-posted deals and get an idea of how the current one compares).
HUKD also lets you set alerts (albeit for ‘heat’ that the deal generates rather than exact price thresholds). When creating an alert, call it '[game name] PC', set the temperature threshold at which you want to be alerted – 100° is a good balance between a popular deal and one that hasn’t been on the site too long, so isn’t likely to expire by the time you get round to it.
Dip into PC Game Pass (and out again)
Game Pass is gaming's answer to Netflix: a subscription platform that lets you play a library of games for a monthly fee. The selection and quality is impressive, and it's the only gaming subscription that regularly features newly released games from day one (even on the £13.49 tier, a privilege not extended to Game Pass users on Xbox).
This means that you could potentially play games that would cost £50 to £70 on the day of release for a monthly price of £13.49 for the 'PC' Game Pass tier (or less if you grab one of our PC Game Pass deals). This tier probably represents the best value, unless you also play on an Xbox console or are particularly interested in cloud gaming (whereby you play games by streaming them from Microsoft's servers instead of installing them locally - which requires a strong internet connection).
You get nearly the same amount of games as the pricey Ultimate tier (and the ones you don't get are console-only, so dependent on you owning an Xbox), for a little over half the price. Crucially, with PC Game Pass, you still get those Day One releases, so get to play the latest games as they're released instead of having to wait.
Here's a breakdown of what you get with each tier of Game Pass.
Essential | PC | Premium | Ultimate | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Price | £6.99/mth | £13.49/mth | £10.99/mth | £22.99/mth |
Number of games | 50+ | 400+ | 200+ | 500+ |
Exclusive discounts | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | |
EA Play membership (select library of EA games) | ✅ | ✅ | ||
Day One releases | ✅ | ✅ | ||
Cloud gaming | ✅ | ✅ (shorter wait times) | ✅ (shortest wait times, higher resolution) | |
Xbox (console) Game Pass (requires Xbox console) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | |
Rewards points | Up to 25,000 (worth £25) | Up to 50,000 (worth £50) | Up to 50,000 (worth £50) | Up to 100,000 (worth £100) |
As Microsoft has now absorbed various gaming publishers like a great green blob – including Activision-Blizzard, Bethesda, Obsidian, as well as its own in-house studios – you'll find a lot of popular games new and old here such as Diablo, DOOM, Skyrim, Starfield, and Call of Duty.
Microsoft also collaborates with Ubisoft and EA, meaning you get the likes of Far Cry, Assassin's Creed, EA FC, UFC, Battlefield, and more. Alongside the big names, Game Pass features a vast selection of retro and indie titles too that you can play from day one (such as 2025 Game of the Year contenders Hollow Knight: Silksong and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33).
Alternatively, if you have your eyes on a particular game, you could just subscribe to Game Pass for a month, play through that game, then unsubscribe (or, ideally, subscribe to Game Pass, immediately turn off auto-renew in your Microsoft account, then play the game without worrying about your subscription rolling over into another month).
To work out whether it's worth it for you, filter the games available on Game Pass by each subscription tier.
Using the above method, I found that throughout a year of using Game Pass, I'd only ended up paying for about six months, because I'd only pay for it for the months when I expect to play. During that time I've completed Clair Obscur, Hollow Knight: Silksong, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and Doom: The Dark Ages. I've goofed around in Call of Duty for hours, and played a bunch of lovely indie games that I wouldn't have otherwise known about.
That's £100s worth of games ticked off the backlog for a mere dozens of pounds.
You can apply a similar strategy to other gaming subscriptions such as Ubisoft+ or EA Play (though many of their games are already included in PC Game Pass) or the cloud-based Amazon Luna (included with Amazon Prime).
Buying from unauthorised key resellers is risky
Your search for cheap games may lead you to sites such as Eneba, G2A, K4G, and Kinguin. These aren't authorised sellers as they don't obtain codes straight from the games' publishers or suppliers. While it's not illegal to buy from them, they do carry certain risks, largely stemming from the fact that these sites mostly sell keys - or in some cases accounts - posted by individual users.
You could end up buying a key procured by a seller through illicit means (such as a stolen credit card). If the card gets flagged as stolen, that game key can be traced back to it, and Steam (or whichever platform you're using) could permanently deactivate your game without warning.
Also be aware that some of these sites (G2A, Kinguin, K4G) also sell accounts to play games on. When you buy a game via an account, it means you don’t get a key for the game, but instead the login details to an account that contains that game. This breaks Steam's Subscriber Agreement.
If you also dabble in consoles and want to know how to grab the best bargains for those, then head over to our respective guides for finding cheap Nintendo Switch 2, Playstation 5, and Xbox games.
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