How can 3rd party vendors sell Steam keys for mind bogglingly cheap beyond what you can find on Steam sales? Noobs constantly ask on Reddit whether or not such businesses are legit. Humble, Fantatical, Greenman Gaming, Indiegala are definitely legit with direct partnerships with publishers. Game devs and publishers however detest gray market sites like G2A which I personally do not use. A game dev said they would rather players pirate their game than give money to G2A.
I use gg.deals/isthereanydeal.com to track historical prices and past bundle history to figure out what to buy. I will cover 3 sites where I get my cheap games, mostly bundles when I actually have to buy stuff.
Humble
Humble is the king and granddaddy of budget bundles, formed in 2010 to donate portion of game proceeds charity. They also support and publish indie developers. IGN bought out Humble in 2017.
Humble provides a monthly subscription service and also offer bundles regularly not only for video games but for books and software. In 2020, there has been a crackdown on reselling and trading which is against the terms of service(TOS) unless you are a citizen of the EU protected against such restrictions.
Humble Choice- is a monthly game bundle subscription service at 3 tiers. I'm only going to cover the top premium service because the bottom two are unattractive.
This top tier monthly subscription service is regularly $19.99 but they constantly offer e-mail deals. I have the 6 month $10 a month special, 50% off. For the promo price of $10, I get 9 games each month which I by most measures is a pretty good deal. The premium monthly regular price is $20, used to be $12, and the classic plan is grandfathered in. I probably would subscribe intermittently at $20.
The quality varies month to month although value is going to be in the eyes of the gamer. Humble rewards games that love indie games.
For August, I always wanted to try Vampyr and for $10, I got that with 11 other games. As of Aug, 2020, Vampyr's lowest sale price was $11.99. Vampyr had been briefly available on Xbox Gamepass PC but it left before I bit. And really, Vampyr is unique in compelling ways and embracing should be on everybody's bucket list.
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| August 2020 |
Humble Trove Access with Choice
Being a monthly subscriber gives you access to about 100 DRM free titles you can download and keep forever. There is a lot of filler content that I've gotten free from Epic/Twitch Prime but it does include a few interesting games I wouldn't play otherwise. For me, Kind Worlds and Getting Over it By Bennett Foddy were the standouts.
Fanatical
Fanatical - queen of cheap bundles operating out of the UK and used to be called Bundle Stars. I've gotten probably some of my best non-historic bundles out of Fanatical. They sell fixed bundles or make your own bundle deals.
I've ran into many a bundle snob on reddit who diss Fanatical for having games everybody already has. Well, if you don't have those games, it's fabulous value.
My favorite fanatical bundle has been the Reaper 4 bundle at $4.99 which gave me Rainworld, Technomancer, Redoubt, Beholder 2, Textorcist, Don't Feed the Monkeys, plus 5 other games. I really only wanted Rainworld and Technomancer but the other titles ended up being really interesting to try even if for only an hour.
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