About
Grumpy Old Gamers exists because there are great deals out there — and finding them shouldn't require checking a dozen tabs. Steam, GOG, Epic, Humble: stores run sales all the time, and prices vary more than most people realise.
So we built this. A straightforward price comparison site that pulls current UK prices across the major stores, shows you the cheapest option, and gets out of your way.
Which stores we list, and which we don't
Four: Steam, GOG, Humble Bundle and the Epic Games Store. All of them sell you the game directly. None of them are grey-market key resellers, and we don't plan to add any.
Not every cheap key is the same thing, and the difference is worth knowing. A key marketplace is a platform where individual sellers list keys they bought elsewhere; the platform brokers the sale and stands behind very little. A bulk key retailer buys keys from suppliers and sells them to you directly — a real shop, often a long-established one, but without a relationship with the publisher. An authorised reseller buys from the publisher under an agreement, which is what the four stores above do.
We list the third kind today. We don't list marketplaces, because a key with no traceable origin can be revoked months later and leave you with nothing. Bulk retailers sit in between: mostly fine, genuinely cheaper, and with two differences that matter — keys are often locked to a region, and if something goes wrong there is no publisher in the chain to appeal to. If we ever list one, we will say which it is and what you're getting, rather than quietly mixing it in with the rest.
Sometimes that means the cheapest price on the internet isn't the cheapest price on this site.
What you actually get
“Cheapest” is not the whole question — the same game at the same price is a different purchase depending on what lands in your account. Every price we show says which, on the row itself:
- GOG — A DRM-free installer you can download and keep. No launcher required, and no account needed to play once it is installed.
- Steam — Added to your Steam account. The Steam client is required to install and play.
- Humble Bundle — Usually a Steam key, occasionally a DRM-free download or a key for another store. Humble states which on the product page — check before buying if it matters to you.
- Epic Games Store — Added to your Epic Games account. The Epic Games Launcher is required to install and play.
How we make money
Some store links pay us, and those are marked with a gold coinicon, explained in a key beside the prices. GOG and Humble Bundle pay a commission through an affiliate network; the Epic Games Store pays a share of revenue through Epic's Creator Program. Either way it costs you nothing — the price is exactly the same as typing the store's address yourself.
None of it influences what we show you. We always highlight the cheapest price regardless of which store it's at, and if the best deal pays us nothing — which, for most of the stores we list, it doesn't — we still show it. There's more detail on how we make money.
Data sources
Prices are updated daily for our curated catalogue and in real time when you search for a game we haven't listed yet.
Who runs this
Grumpy Old Gamers is owned and operated by Axiom Testing Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 17267026). Axiom Testing is a software testing consultancy, and this site is one of the projects it builds and tests in the open — its test coverage is published at /coverage.json.
Questions or corrections: hello@grumpyoldgamers.net.