Do I need Steam or can I just download games for PC?

kalamityjim · 18-05-2022 04:50PM #1

Is there away to just buy a product key and download and install a game any more or do you need the likes of Steam?

Is having Steam or Origin running in the background not detrimental to performance and overheating?

If I google 'buy <game name>' pc', I get lists of ads of sites like cdkeys that offer the game at a fraction of what it would be on the developer's site or the major retailers to the point where I'm wondering if they're even legit or what's the catch!

Any tips for buying pc games are welcome, thanks.

Spear · 18-05-2022 05:02PM

Since the platforms provide activation/DRM as well as selling the games, the publishers leave that up to them rather than maintain their own activation servers.

Having Steam or Origin running shouldn't consume any significant resources normally.

Dodgy keys sites are very random. There are various legit key sellers, but there's plenty with stolen keys too or bought in one cheaper market and sold in a more expensive one, hence the lower prices.

Cordell · 18-05-2022 05:04PM

Yes, for pretty much any game you need to use a distribution platform like Steam, and really there is nothing to worry about.

gog.com sells DRM free games which supposedly don't require any 3rd party app but also they do have their own app :)

cdkeys is a grey market reseller, it's a long discussion but generally you won't have any issue with what they sell as long as you know what you get: some games may be region locked so you need to pay attention and you will lose the refund option you have with some other platforms if you don't like the game - Steam will refund if you played less than 2 hours.

5uspect · 19-05-2022 09:26AM

Pretty much everything comes with a launcher of some sort these days and Steam is the de facto best of the lot. It’s overhead is minimal and you won’t even notice it. It also offers a lot of benefits such as in home streaming to other displays, a useful in game overlay, automatic updates, cloud saves and really fast content delivery servers.

While the sales aren’t what they used to be you can still get great deals on Steam and you’re not leaving your card details scattered across the internet.

Skerries · 20-05-2022 12:53AM

Steam is the best of the platforms and as said they have lots of sales like a big one next month but you can get most games cheaper on grey sites, allkeyshop gives you the cheapest price

https://www.allkeyshop.com/blog/

Epic games give you free games for nothing every week and the big one this week is Borderlands 3

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/

Humble Bundle and Fanatical give you a variety of games in bundles

https://www.humblebundle.com/bundles

https://www.fanatical.com/en/bundle

GOG do older games that will work with modern OSes and they also give away free games occasionally

https://www.gog.com/en

Ubisoft have their own client and have sales as well such as the one right now, use code LEGEND22

https://store.ubi.com/uk/legendary-sale

Gamepass is a good way of playing a lot of games if your a newbie to pc gaming

https://www.xbox.com/en-IE/xbox-game-pass/pc-game-pass