Cheap Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, and what to skip

For most of this summer, cheap Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus was not a sale. It was one merchant, holding one listing, at a price that barely moved for three months — and when that listing went, the whole bargain went with it.

Reading our own record on 5 October 2026: the lowest figure we have ever logged for Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is $1.20, on 30 July 2026. We hold 102 daily readings going back to 18 June, and 87 of them came in at or below $1.50. Then, on 24 September, the reseller that had been sitting at the bottom of our table since late July simply stopped appearing in it, and the cheapest tracked price for the game more than tripled. It has barely budged since.

MachineGames built the whole game around dual-wielding any two weapons, which is why the difficulty settings matter more here than in most shooters. (Official Steam screenshot)

Where cheap Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus comes from

Bethesda shooters from 2017 do not get discounted the way new releases do. They get bulk-allocated. A publisher offloads a batch of keys to the grey market, a reseller lists them at whatever clears the batch, and the price sits there — not fluctuating with sale calendars, just sitting — until the batch is gone.

Our record shows exactly that shape. From 28 June to 22 September the floor never moved more than six cents in either direction. From the end of July our data names the merchant holding it: GAMIVO. On 24 September that listing left our table and a different reseller inherited the bottom slot at more than three times the price. Nothing about the game changed. The supply of cheap keys did.

This is the single most useful thing to understand about buying older shooters cheaply, and it is the opposite of how a Steam sale works. A Steam discount has an end date you can read. A key allocation has no end date at all — it ends when it ends, with no warning, and the price does not come back down afterwards unless someone acquires another batch.

The 2017 launch trailer, from Bethesda Softworks' own channel.

What our record says about buying now

We track 15 live listings today, and the practical read is unusually simple: the official-store price and the cheapest reseller price are now close enough that the reseller route is not buying you much. When the gap is a few per cent, you are trading a refund window, an instant library entry and a guaranteed region for pennies. That is a bad trade on a game this cheap.

Which leads to the slightly deflating conclusion that the right move is probably to buy it on an official sale and stop optimising. A game at this price point does not reward research — the time you spend hunting a better listing is worth more than the difference. Check the live price on the game page, see whether an official store is running a cut, and if one is, take it.

The occupied-America setting is the reason this game is remembered, and it is almost entirely delivered in the quiet scenes rather than the combat. (Official Steam screenshot)

The regional picture, and the keyshops that are not there

Here is a structural fact you will not find on a store page. As we read our regional tables on 5 October 2026, there is no key-reseller offer at all in our data for Canada, Australia, New Zealand or Georgia. Those buyers have official stores and nothing else.

The depth of the discount splits the same way. Measured against each region's cheapest official listing as we read it today, our tracked all-time low is around 77% below official in the United States and roughly 73% below in the eurozone — but only about 22% below in Canada, 15% in Australia and 7% in New Zealand. The grey-market floor that makes this game a near-free impulse buy in Europe and North America has never really existed in Oceania. Our explainer on regional pricing covers why.

Which edition, and the season pass question

There is a standard edition and there is the Freedom Chronicles season pass, sold separately or as three individual episodes. The episodes are short, self-contained side stories starring three characters who are not BJ Blazkowicz. They do not continue the main story, they are not required for anything else in the series, and each is sold on its own as well as in the pass.

So: buy the standard game. If you finish it and want more, the episodes will still be there, and they will still be cheap. Buying the pass up front on a game this old is paying a premium for the privilege of not deciding later.

Which Wolfenstein to buy first

If you have not played any of them, this is not the one to start with. Wolfenstein: The New Order from 2014 is the better game and the better entry point — Very Positive at 92% across more than 62,000 Steam reviews, against 81% and just under 50,000 for The New Colossus. It introduces the characters that the sequel assumes you already care about, and its structure is tighter.

The New Order is the series reboot and the one to play first. (Official Steam art)

The Old Blood is a standalone prequel to The New Order, at 90%, and it is the shortest of the three — a genuine weekend game. The Two-Pack bundles the reboot pair; as with any bundle, price it against the two games individually before assuming it saves you anything, which is the whole argument of our piece on costing a bundle properly.

The "No More Nazis" gameplay trailer, also from Bethesda Softworks' own channel, is the clearest look at how the combat actually plays.

What to skip

Wolfenstein: Youngblood is the one to leave alone. It sits at Mixed, 43% positive across nearly 16,000 Steam reviews — a co-op spin-off with level-scaled enemies and a progression system bolted onto a series that never needed one. It is frequently cheaper than everything above it, and that is not a reason.

Youngblood's co-op is competent. Its enemy health bars are the problem. (Official Steam screenshot)

What to check before you buy

• Whether the listing is the game or the season pass. At these prices the two can look alike in a search result. Read the edition name.
• Region restrictions. The cheapest grey-market listings are the most likely to carry them. Our keyshop guide has the checks.
• Whether you want the 2017 shooter or the 2014 one. They sit at a similar place in the market, and one of them is notably better reviewed.

The bottom line

Buy it — but buy it on an official store, and buy the standard edition. The $1.20 era is over and it is not coming back on its own: it depended on a single reseller's stock, that stock has run out, and our record shows no second merchant stepping in to match it. What is left is still a very good game at the bottom end of the market, with a Metascore of 86 and a place as the 19th best-reviewed PC game of 2017, and the few per cent you might claw back from a grey-market listing is not worth the region risk.

And if this is your first Wolfenstein, start with The New Order and come back. For the broader method — why the tracked floor tells you more than the discount badge — see our piece on historical lows, and our under-$5 list for what else is down here.