Methodology
How we collect prices, categorise stores, and run our studies
This page explains where playze.io’s prices come from, how we classify the stores we compare, and how our price studies (such as the keyshops-vs-official-stores study) are run. If you are a journalist or researcher and want the underlying figures, email [email protected].
Where prices come from
Prices are collected from public store pricing APIs and licensed third-party pricing feeds, refreshed continuously. For each game we store the current price per region, the regular (non-sale) price, the discount, and the all-time historical low we have observed. Prices are shown per region (US, EU, UK, Poland, Georgia, Brazil) in the local currency.
How we categorise stores
Not every “cheap” listing is the same kind of seller. We group stores into three categories, and label them consistently across the site and in our studies:
- Official stores — the platform or publisher selling directly (Steam, GOG, Epic, Ubisoft, EA, etc.). Keys are issued by the platform itself.
- Authorized resellers — stores that source keys directly from publishers or authorized distributors under contract (e.g. Fanatical, GreenManGaming). Effectively official pricing from a different shop.
- Third-party key marketplaces — open marketplaces where independent sellers list keys (e.g. Kinguin, GAMIVO, Eneba, G2A, K4G). Prices are often lowest here, but the seller — not the publisher — is the source, so buyer protection varies by marketplace.
When a study refers to “keyshops”, it means the third-party marketplace category above. We never imply a marketplace is an authorized reseller unless the store itself holds that status.
How the price studies are run
Our comparison studies use live prices pulled on a stated date, for a defined sample of games, in a single region and currency (US / USD unless noted). For each game we take the cheapest available offer in each category and compare them. We report the median saving (not the average, so a few outliers don’t distort the headline), the share of games where each category wins, and a whole-basket total.
We publish the sample size, the date, the region, and the store categories with every study, and we state the limitations plainly — for example, marketplace prices exclude buyer-protection fees some shoppers add, and a small sample of popular titles is not the entire catalogue.
Corrections
If you spot a figure you think is wrong, tell us and we will check it and correct it with a dated note. Accuracy is the whole point of a price-comparison site.