Boltgun 2 price: buy the sequel, or the cheap first game?

The Boltgun 2 price question has an odd shape, because the number worth studying is not the sequel's. Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 arrives today, 14 October 2026, at one fixed figure with nothing to compare it against. The first game, meanwhile, has quietly stopped being one of the cheapest shooters on PC — and it stopped three weeks before the sequel shipped.

That is the whole buying decision in one sentence, and it is not the one the launch coverage is having. Here is what our own price record shows, and what it means if you are deciding between the new one and the old one this week.

What the Boltgun 2 price looks like on day one

Auroch Digital developed both games, but the publisher changed: Focus Entertainment put out the 2023 original, while the sequel comes from Big Fan Games with Devolver Digital alongside. It launches on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S today, with a Switch 2 version promised later in the year and no date attached to it.

As of 14 October 2026, our record holds exactly one listing for Boltgun 2, and it has not moved by a cent since we first logged it on 24 September. There is no key-reseller listing at all. Not an expensive one — none. Check the current figure on the Boltgun 2 game page, but do not expect to find it undercut anywhere, because as of this morning there is nowhere doing the undercutting.

The sequel keeps the original's trick of rendering modern lighting through a deliberately chunky pixel filter. Note the publisher's own "not final footage" watermark — these are pre-launch press shots. (Official Steam screenshot)

That matters more than it sounds. For most games, the cheapest listing on launch day is a reseller key bought in bulk, and the official storefront is the expensive option. Boltgun 2 has no such listing, which means the launch price is simply the price. There is no clever route around it this week.

The first game's floor moved, and it moved early

Now the genuinely useful number. Our price record for the original Boltgun begins in mid-June 2026 and covers 98 days with a logged price. The lowest we have ever recorded is $1.26, on 25 June 2026. That was not a one-afternoon fluke either: 71 of those 98 days sat under $2. For most of the summer, the first Boltgun was a game you bought without thinking about it.

That era has ended. The last day we logged it under $2 was 22 September 2026, at the reseller Gameseal. Since 1 October, the cheapest price we have seen on any day is $4.36 — roughly three and a half times the July floor. The sub-$2 Boltgun did not survive its own sequel's launch month.

The 2023 original. Its cathedrals and forge-world corridors are the reason it still reviews well three years on. (Official Steam screenshot)

Whether the sequel caused that is not something a price record can prove, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. What it can tell you is the timing, and the timing is unambiguous: the floor lifted in the fortnight before launch and has stayed lifted. If you were waiting for the first game to drop back under a couple of pounds before trying the series, you waited through the window.

Where the keyshop gap actually is

The original still has a real spread between stores, and the sequel does not. As of 14 October 2026, the cheapest key we can see for the first Boltgun in the United States sits about 32% under the cheapest official listing. In Poland the same gap is about 38%. In Canada, Australia and New Zealand our record carries no reseller listing at all, so buyers there are looking at official pricing whether they like it or not.

If you have not bought a key from a reseller before, read our piece on whether keyshops are safe first — a third off is a real saving, and it comes with real caveats about regional locks and payment disputes that are worth understanding before you spend anything.

The Sister of Battle reveal, from Devolver Digital's own channel. Nyra Veyrath is the sequel's second playable character alongside returning Space Marine Malum Caedo.

Is the sequel worth the gap over the original?

The honest framing is that you are not choosing between two prices, you are choosing between a known quantity and an unknown one. The first Boltgun sits at Very Positive on Steam, 89% across more than 18,000 reviews, with a Metacritic score of 75. It is a short, loud, fundamentally uncomplicated boomer shooter that does one thing properly. It also has an expansion, Forges of Corruption, if you finish the base campaign and want more of it.

The sequel's pitch is more of everything — more enemies, more weapons, a second playable character in a Sister of Battle, and a Chaos god's worth of new material built around Slaanesh and Vashtorr. That is a reasonable pitch from a studio that already proved it can build this kind of game. It is still a pitch, on launch day, with no player reviews behind it.

Nurgle's contribution to the sequel's enemy roster. The first game's complaint was spongy enemies and samey corridors; whether this fixes that is the one thing no price record can tell you. (Official Steam screenshot)

What to do this week

If you have never played the first one, start there. Even at its lifted October floor it is a fraction of the sequel, it is three years of patches deep, and four or five hours with it will tell you whether the series suits you far more reliably than any trailer will. If it does not click, you have saved yourself the sequel's full price.

Forge worlds, lava and enormous machinery — the sequel is working the same visual register as the first game, at a larger scale. (Official Steam screenshot)

If you already finished the original and want more, buying at launch is defensible here in a way it usually is not. There is no cheaper route to Boltgun 2 right now, the game is short enough that waiting six months costs you the conversation, and our look at what pre-order and launch pricing actually does found that the first meaningful cut on a mid-priced game of this size typically arrives on a seasonal sale rather than in launch week. Buying now is not the same as overpaying.

If you are simply after a good shooter and have no particular loyalty to the setting, the money goes further elsewhere this week. DUSK and ULTRAKILL are both better-regarded than either Boltgun, and both discount hard and often; our running list of discounted shooters is the place to check what is cut today. If what you actually want is the Warhammer setting at its most expensive and most cinematic, Space Marine 2 is the other direction entirely.

The Slaanesh reveal, posted by publisher Big Fan Games. A fair look at the sequel's speed and its enemy variety.

The bottom line

Boltgun 2 has no cheap route on day one, and our record says so plainly: one listing, unmoved since 24 September, no reseller undercutting it. That makes it an unusually honest launch — the price you see is the price, and there is no point hunting.

The first game is the better buy for anyone not already sold on the series, but buy it knowing the bargain has shrunk. It spent most of the summer under $2 and has not been there since 22 September. That is the cost of arriving late, and it is still a small one. If you want the reasoning behind why a tracked floor is a target rather than a promise, we set that out in what a historical low actually means. For the publisher's back catalogue more broadly, our Focus Entertainment sale round-up covers where the original's stablemates tend to land.

Prices on both games move daily. The Boltgun and Boltgun 2 pages carry the live figures across every store we track.