When one of us gamers wants to buy a video game, we go straight to the Steam Store, Epic Store or the EA App Store. Sounds straightforward, right?
Well, before you do that, we want to point out a possibly more cost-efficient way of buying video games online. One of our community members pointed out to us that they constantly face other fellow gamers online that were not aware of the existence of other 3rd party stores. These stores usually have a lot of deals, discounts and bundles at a cheaper price than the official stores mentioned above.
As with every online market, there are highly-reputable stores that are official affiliates, partners or authorized resellers of the classic stores, while there are shady gray-spaced stores.
In this short survey, we will list the most famous-and-tried stores online, looking at their average ratings from different reputable sources, and then list stores that are in the gray-area which we recommend on being careful when buying from them.
These stores, for the most part, offer you a the steam cd-key of the game, or lets you redeem the game directly into your EPIC or EA accounts.
Highly-Known Stores
These are stores that were tested and tried alot. In fact, some of the games we give as free giveaways are purchased from one of the below vendors.
We have added a column that says whether Reddit Gamedeals has this site as one of its’ known sites, since that is often a solid indicator that many gamer Redditors have tested and tried it.
We mention here the rating this site has on IsThereAnyDeal. IsThereAnyDeal is a very popular website that tracks current game discounts on all these major sites. We strongly suggest to check this website before deciding on which store to buy from.
Our verdict is based on the three factors we take into calculation: IsThereAnyDeal Rating, TrustPilot Score, whether it is Reddit-Featured or not, and whether we tried it or not.
| Store | IsThereAnyDeal Rating | TrustPilot Score | Reddit-Featured? | FragFriend-Tried | Our Verdict |
| Humble Store | 76% positive | 4 stars | Yes | Yes | Perfect |
| GOG | 85% positive | 4.5 stars | Yes | Yes | Perfect |
| GameBillet | 79% positive | 4.8 stars | Yes | No | Perfect |
| GamersGate | 31% positive | 4.0 | Yes | Yes | Perfect |
| Newegg | 20% positive | 3.2 | Yes | No | Perfect |
| Green Man Gaming | 48% positive | 4.7 | Yes | Yes | Perfect |
| Itch.io | None | 2.4 | Yes | Yes | Good |
| WinGameStore | 56% positive | 4.8 | Yes | Yes | Good |
| Indie Gala | 26% positive | 4.0 | Yes | No | Good |
| AllYouPlay | 44% positive | 4.0 | Yes | No | Good |
| Fanatical | 76% positive | 4.6 | Yes | No | Good |
| DreamGame | 0% positive | 3.9 | No | No | Could be better |
| Nuuvem | 57% positive | 4.6 | No | No | Could be better |
Other Stores
After we talked about stores that are almost-perfect, let us point three more stores where Video Game CD-Keys could be bought.
G2A is a very popular gaming store that many get their video games from. It differs from the above stores in the fact that it is actually a marketplace: it works like Amazon where independent sellers post their CD-Keys for sale. The problem is that you could never verify where these cd-keys came from and whether they are publisher-approved.
The risk in such methods is that if the CD-Key was not approved by the publisher for re-sale, it might get your Steam, Epic or EA account banned and all your games revoked. In easier cases, you might get only the game you bought revoked but lose the money you spent on it.
The same goes for CDKeys and CJS-CDKeys stores – they are actually marketplaces and you can never be sure how the reseller obtained the key.
Conclusion
It is always a safe practice to buy only from official stores like Steam Store, Epic Store or the EA App Store. However, before you do that, be sure to check out sites like IsThereAnyDeal and GG.Deals first because you might spot that one of the reputable stores we surveyed above has a discount on the game you are looking for.
If you know of any other highly-reputable online game stores, or ones that you have had a bad experience with, let us know in the comments!
Stay safe, shop well and enjoy!
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