The only trustworthy key sites I know of are: Green Man & Fanatical, most game keys distributed on either site are gathered from the developers directly and region free meaning they work regardless of where you live (although not every game, depends on the publisher) while from Steam proper, sales may appear (some are worldwide while others are regional). Don’t tell me, does both Steam including key sites impose VAT & Sales Tax on top of the price? I know that actual retailers have to add taxes (all nations have a form of VAT).
Do you buy
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I use IsThereAnyDeal. Don’t really care about the source, as long as they’re listed on ITAD, have a 70% or higher discount, and the purchase can be activated on Steam (or it’s GOG). I trust ITAD to not list fraudulent sources.
Pretty much. Absolutely love ITAD. Their discord is also pretty active in verifying sources.
Theres a bunch of distributors that are legitimate and real businesses. Which is what we want to encourage competition.
Green Man and fanatical are trustworthy because they purchase and sell keys as a proper retailer by buying keys from the devs.
Sites like g2a sell spare keys or dubious key sources, such as using stolen credit cards. Using a reputable seller like gmg is completely fine, g2a and the likes on the other hand often actively hurts the devs.
How do the prices compare?
Not sure, I mostly use gog because it’s drm free and I pay if the price seems fair for the product I’m receiving. I did recently purchase spider man remastered which was cheaper on gmg.
On steam or through Humble Bundles.
But it has been a while since I got a bundle.
Honestly, aside from humble choice, I don’t really use the platform much anymore. It’s been quite some time since I’ve seen a half-decent game bundle through them which is unfortunate.
I still find their humble choice program is well worth the money put in, it is a shame that their bundles just fall through now.
Usually end up buying games during Steam sales, or sometimes via Humble Bundle… though nowadays Humble Bundle hasn’t been as interesting after they were bought out and the founders stepped down. Before all that Humble Bundle used to have some great Indie bundles with lots of Linux and Android games.
I would also probably buy from gog.com and itch.io but haven’t really needed to yet.
I’m usually looking around for games with Linux compatibility so any game storefront that ignores Linux gets ignored by me.
GOG or directly from the developer/distributor. Don’t have Steam.
I’ve been moving toward GOG to prevent DRM/update annoyance, but I’ve used isthereanydeal to find some other places to get things I want on steam.
all nations have a form of VAT
Is all sales tax VAT though? Or is VAT more of a specific thing?
(we’re American so we’re used to sales tax being randomly added onto everything, and know other countries generally don’t have that because they’re more, uh, civilized places; not super clear on how VAT specifically works though.)
– Frost
VAT (Value Added Tax) is an indirect consumption tax levied on the value added at each stage of a product’s production and distribution chain. Unlike a traditional sales tax, which is only collected at the final point of sale, VAT is applied at every step, from raw materials to the final consumer.
Businesses act as intermediaries by collecting output VAT from customers and paying input VAT on their own business expenses. To determine their tax liability, businesses deduct the input VAT they have paid from the output VAT they have collected, remitting only the difference to the government. This credit mechanism ensures that the tax burden ultimately falls on the end consumer, who cannot reclaim the VAT paid.
For example, if a manufacturer buys raw materials for $100 plus $10 VAT (input VAT) and sells the finished product for $150 plus $15 VAT (output VAT), they remit $5 to the government ($15 collected - $10 paid). This process repeats at each stage, ensuring the government collects 10% of the value added at that specific step.
I thought all the retailers on isthereanydeal.com were safe. Allkeyshop has loads of cheap keys and ive seen plenty of key use from there without problems, but one bad key can get your account (and your whole library) banned.
I’ve used Kinguin a couple times to get keys for games so I could buy them at sales price during regular price season. It worked twice for me but don’t know if they can be trusted, do your homework
Kinguin is more of a mediator, the keys are from other sellers. To my knowledge they’re usually bought with stolen credit cards. So it’s just money laundering. Don’t buy from there or similar sites unless you want to actively hurt the developer (since they end up paying chargeback fees).
If I’m going to avoid paying the devs directly what they are worth, I’ll just pirate. Paying for keys just wastes money and risks getting your account banned. There are a few multiplayer exceptions but again, I’ll just pay the devs then. If I HAVE to play a multiplayer game I will probably get my money’s worth out of it.
I prefer to buy directly from the manufacturer. Otherwise, yeah, Steam is my second option.
Most of my games come from Humble Bundle, or steam sales
Once upon a time, I used to be an avid user of G2A, which is a third-party key site. But when Steam added the ability of being able to return video games that are purchased first party, I stopped using this site as often because it’s usually more cost effective for me to spend a dollar or two more and be able to return the game if it’s a lemon.
I do still troll through fanatical, though, every once and awhile they drop some amazing bundles.
My process before buying any game is checking isthereanydeal to see if there’s any insane price difference But generally speaking, Steam has a price that is close enough when it’s on sale so I usually just wait for a sale on steam
Games I may not play I pirate first. Played about halfway through split fiction then bought it on steam when it went on sale. I’ve stocked up a lot of games over the years and no time to play them. Just got dead island 2 for me and the kiddo, most of my purchases are gog or steam and mostly for the kid nowadays, like trail makers. Wish I had more time to play.
Steam or real world retailers
