LifeSavvy
Best Cases
The Best Newsletter Anywhere
Join 250,000 subscribers and get a daily digest of news, articles, and more.
The Best Tools to Score Awesome Deals on Steam
Eric Ravenscraft @lordravenscraft
February 14, 2018, 12:00pm EDT February 14, 2018, 11:37am EDT
There's almost never a good reason to buy a Steam game for full price unless you have to have it the day it comes out. If you can be patient, then you can save big on the games you want. With these tools, you can find out when the next big sales are, track prices over time, and get alerted when the games you want are cheap enough to buy.
WhenIsTheNextSteamSale?
There are always deals of some sort on Steam (like daily deals, "midweek madness", weekend sales, etc.) but nothing compares to a full out Steam Sale. There are a couple of big sales every year, with smaller sales in between. More often than not, the lowest price for any game on your wish list will come during a sale. Steam famously doesn't announce sales in advance, but fortunately they stick to a pretty predictable schedule. A schedule that WhenIsTheNextSteamSale.com chronicles.
Head to the site and you'll be greeted with a big, friendly countdown timer that estimates when the next Steam Sale is going to go live. It also denotes when a sale date is confirmed and when it's coming from rumors or speculation based on previous sales. It's not 100% reliable, since it's rarely based on official information, but it's as close as you'll get to a heads up when the next sale is approaching. If you're on the fence about making a particular purchase, it always pays to check if there's a Steam sale right around the corner.
Enhanced Steam
Steam's website has a wealth of information including reviews, bundles, DLC listings and plenty more, but it could still use some key features the company will never add. Information like whether other stores have it for cheaper. Steam's not gonna tell you if you can get a better deal somewhere else, but the browser extension Enhanced Steam (Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Edge) will.
The extension will show you when a game is available for a lower price in another region (if you happen to have an overseas friend you could pay to gift it to you) or, more importantly, when it's cheaper on some other store. Plenty of stores will let you buy a game then activate them on Steam, so there's no reason not to shop around before you buy directly from Steam.
SteamDB
For those who prefer to stick with Steam, the aptly named SteamDB provides analytics for the gaming library but, most importantly, it lets you search and analyze sales on the site. You can narrow down search results to games that are discounted a certain percentage, that are within a specific rating range, and even filter by platform, type, or tags.
You're only looking at Steam's specific sales, so this is better used as a tool to find hidden gems during a big Steam sale, rather than to track a single game's price. There are frequent sales on Steam, sure, but other sites sell Steam-activated game codes often for a lower price or more often throughout the year so why limit yourself? If you're just curious what's on sale today, though, SteamDB can help you out.
IsThereAnyDeal
If you don't want to add yet another browser extension to your collection (and we can't say we blame you), IsThereAnyDeal can fill a similar void. Another service with a sentence for a name, this site tracks prices for Steam games across a number of stores and keeps track of their price history. This not only lets you see which sites have a good deal now, but also how often there have been even better deals. You can sometimes use this data to determine whether you should buy now or wait for an even better deal later.
You can also import your Steam wish list and get notified when a game you want is on sale. You can choose to specify certain stores you like buying from, and even filter by stores that let you activate your games on Steam. The site also allows you to specify how much of a discount you want, so you only get alerts when a game's price is reduced by a certain percent or below a certain dollar amount.
Don't Forget to Add Games to Your Wishlist
Speaking of wish lists and importing them, while price comparison tools are super awesome there's no substitution for Steam itself handling the notifications. By all means use the bevy of tools we've just laid out for you, but be sure to add any game you're even remotely interested in to your Steam account's wishlist. Steam is in the business of selling games and they will never miss a chance to notify you that a game you've saved to your wishlist is on sale. Even if you completely miss that a Steam sale is underway, you'll get pinged every of that sale if any of your wishlist games get discounted. If nothing else it's a fantastic way to save money by watching the cost of a formerly premium new release title drift down to a nice wallet friendly $2.99.
It's not the flashiest tool and there's no price tracking, but given that the alerts are sent by Steam itself it's a rock solid backup to have in place.
› If Sony Doesn't Need E3, Who Does?
› These AR Contacts Are as Smart as They Are Stupid
› A YouTuber Made the GameCube Joy-Cons Nintendo is Too Afraid to Make
› NVIDIA Just Lopped $50 off the RTX 2060—Get It Now for $299
› Chrome OS May Get Steam Support, and That's Got Us Hot and Bothered
Eric Ravenscraft
Eric Ravenscraft has nearly a decade of writing experience in the technology industry. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, PCMag, The Daily Beast, Geek and Sundry, and The Inventory. Read Full Bio »
The above article may contain affiliate links, which help support Review Geek.
These AR Contacts Are as Smart as They Are Stupid
Josh Hendrickson | January 18th
Augmented reality (AR) is full of promise. Imagine getting directions in your vision while walking, or instructions while trying to fix your sink. The problem is most AR solutions calls for bulky headsets and equally large battery packs. A company named Mojo Vision is showing smart contacts that fit right on your eye to provide AR, and they sound great. But they look terrible.
I Wish Someone Would Make a Legit Version of This Sketchy Battery Pack Game System
Sometimes you see an idea for sale that's so wonderful and perfect you want to buy it instantly. At first glance, the Gaming Power Bank seems like exactly that scenario. It's an 8,000 mAh backup battery that ALSO doubles as a portable gaming system. What's not to love? Well, plenty. Second and third glances leave me wanting it—just made by someone reputable.
Update Your Plex Server Or TV Artwork Won't Work After January 31st
Williams Pelegrin | January 16th
When I was a teenager, I loved being able to load up my iPod with a bunch of songs and listen to those songs while headed to school. However, not having the artwork for my music really annoyed me. Assuming you still run an old server version of the Plex Media Server, you'll feel the same annoyance I did.
Twitter Isn't Getting an Edit Button, And That's Fine
In a recent Wired Q&A video, Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, stated clearly that the service is probably never getting an edit feature. For anyone who's ever lamented typos permanently inscribed in a Tweet, that sounds like bad news. But if you look closely at why Twitter abhors editing, the decision makes sense. We can live without editing, even if we don't have to like it.
If Sony Doesn't Need E3, Who Does?
Michael Crider | January 19th
Sony won't be at E3, the biggest trade show in the video game industry. They didn't show up last year either, but with the PlayStation 5 coming this holiday season, it's hard to see the company's absence as anything except a vote of no confidence in gaming's biggest dog and pony show.
Chrome OS May Get Steam Support, and That's Got Us Hot and Bothered
If there's one thing I don't have on my Chromebook I wished I had, it's a working version of Steam. I know I can get around that by installing the Linux version of the popular PC gaming client, but let's just say performance wasn't the best in my experience. It looks like Google read my mind, because the company is working to bring official Steam support to Chrome OS.
The Best Tech Newsletter Anywhere
© 2020 LifeSavvy Media. All Rights Reserved