Use Your Steam Wishlist to Find Cheaper Game Deals Outside Steam

You can connect your Steam Wishlist to a third-party deal tracker called Is There Any Deal, which then watches prices across the major PC storefronts and notifies you when a game you want gets cheaper, whether or not Steam is the store discounting it. It can save real money, as one recent Total War purchase shows.

What Is There Any Deal does

The site tracks game sales across loads of shops, including Steam, the EA Store, the Epic Games Store, GamersGate, GOG, GreenManGaming and Humble. A game that sits at full price on Steam may be heavily discounted elsewhere, and the site shows you both at once.

A £40 lesson with Total War: Warhammer 3

A 17-year-old asked an older relative for the best way to play Total War: Warhammer 3. The reply came a couple of hours later: the game was £50 on Steam, but it was worth waiting, because SteamDB's price history showed it had dropped to £7.50 in the past.

The reply was too late. The teenager had already paid full price on Steam with their birthday money.

A search turned up Is There Any Deal, which showed the Humble Store selling the same game for £7.49 while Steam still charged £50. The advice was to refund the Steam copy and buy the Humble version instead. That saved more than £40. Refunds are subject to Steam's own refund conditions, so check that you're still within them before you try it.

Importing your Wishlist

The site also lets you import every game on your Steam Wishlist and get a notification whenever one of them appears in a deal. Once linked, you no longer have to check prices manually.

The author of this tip ran their own list through it and found Genesis Noir, Ancient Enemy and Norco available for £10 total, each at a discount of more than 70% through stores other than Steam.

A few things to keep in mind

• Steam is not always the cheapest place to buy. Check other storefronts before paying full price.
• SteamDB's price history shows how low a game has dropped before, which helps you judge whether a current discount is worth taking.
• A wishlist full of cheap games is still a spending decision. Alerts can make it easier to buy more than you planned.
• Games bought on other stores may not live in your Steam library, depending on whether the store provides a Steam key.

If you already use other third-party tools to get more out of your Steam library, the comments are open for suggestions.