Cheap XCOM Enemy Within: check this before you buy

Search for cheap XCOM Enemy Within and you will get a page of key resellers all quoting you loose change for it. Buy from one of them without checking, and there is a decent chance you end up with a licence that will not start.

This is not a scam. It is a categorisation problem that has been quietly tripping people up for over a decade, and it is worth ninety seconds of your attention before you spend anything. Here is what you are actually buying, what our own price record says about it, and which XCOM is the one you should get instead.

Why cheap XCOM Enemy Within is the wrong thing to search for

On PC, XCOM: Enemy Within is not a game. Steam's own store data classifies it as DLC, and names its parent explicitly: XCOM: Enemy Unknown. It released on 11 November 2013, a year after the base game, developed by Firaxis and published by 2K.

That means the cheap Enemy Within key you just found will install nothing on its own. It needs Enemy Unknown sitting in the same library first. Plenty of buyers work this out only after the purchase, at which point they own an expansion for a game they do not have.

The confusion is understandable, because Enemy Within is not a small add-on. It folds new soldier abilities, gene modification, mech troopers, a whole second antagonist faction and a spread of new maps into the base campaign — it is the definitive way to play Enemy Unknown, and it is treated as a standalone product almost everywhere except in the place that actually matters, the store licence.

Enemy Within does not run as a separate game — it rebuilds the Enemy Unknown campaign from the inside. (Official Steam screenshot)

One caveat worth stating: the 2013 console releases were packaged differently from the PC version, so if you are buying on a console storefront rather than for PC, read the listing itself rather than assuming either way.

What our price record actually shows

Our continuous tracking of the expansion runs from 24 June 2026 to today, 12 September 2026 — a modest thirteen readings, so treat this as a recent snapshot rather than a lifetime history. Across it, one thing does not move: Enemy Within stays comfortably in the middle of the price range for an old strategy add-on, and it barely discounts.

The base game is a completely different story. We hold far more readings for Enemy Unknown over a slightly longer window, and it has spent that entire period as a bargain-bin title, drifting down to genuinely trivial figures.

Put the two together and you get the fact that makes this whole search term misleading: as of today, our record has the expansion trading at well over ten times what the base game it requires costs. The cheap thing you found is the expensive half.

2K's original announcement trailer for the expansion, from the publisher's own channel.

The strategic layer that sits above the turn-based missions is where Enemy Within made most of its additions. (Official Steam screenshot)

The other reason it never gets cheap

There is a structural explanation. Of the offers we currently track for Enemy Within, every one is from an official storefront — we hold no key-reseller listings for it at all. Enemy Unknown, by contrast, has both, and its cheapest reading today comes from a reseller rather than a shop.

Expansion licences are simply less interesting to the grey market than base games, so the competitive pressure that flattens the price of an old game never arrives for its DLC. If you have been waiting for Enemy Within to hit the same prices as the rest of the 2K back catalogue, our data suggests you will be waiting a while.

Check the bundle maths before you trust it

The obvious answer is the Enemy Unknown + Enemy Within bundle, which solves the compatibility problem in one purchase. Sometimes it is the right buy. Today, checking our own figures, it is not — the bundle is currently sitting above the cost of buying the two pieces separately.

That inversion is common and rarely deliberate: a bundle price is set once and then left alone while the individual components slide around underneath it. The rule is simply to price all three before you commit — base game, expansion, bundle — and take whichever is actually cheaper on the day. Never assume a bundle is a discount because it is labelled as one.

The base-building layer is the half of XCOM that people remember years later. (Official Steam screenshot)

The awkward comparison: XCOM 2 costs less

Here is the part that should change your decision. XCOM 2 — a larger, newer, better-regarded game from 2016, with its own well-liked War of the Chosen expansion — is currently trading, in our record, below what you would pay for a 2013 expansion pack.

That is not a marginal difference and it is not a one-day fluke; XCOM 2 has been in bargain territory across the whole window we track. XCOM: Chimera Squad, the smaller 2020 spin-off, sits lower still.

So if what you actually want is "a good XCOM game for very little money", the honest answer is that Enemy Within is close to the worst value in the series right now, purely because it is the one product in the range that has not been discounted into the floor.

The XCOM 2 launch trailer, from the official XCOM channel.

So which XCOM should you buy?

Work through it in this order.

• Never played XCOM at all? Buy XCOM 2 and, when it is cheap, War of the Chosen. It is the better game, it is the cheaper game, and starting with the 2012 original is nostalgia rather than advice.
• Specifically want the 2012 campaign? Buy Enemy Unknown first — it costs almost nothing — play a few missions, and only add Enemy Within if you are still enjoying it. The expansion is not going anywhere and it is not going to get much cheaper either.
• Already own Enemy Unknown? Then Enemy Within is a fair buy on its own terms. It is the version the game should have shipped as.
• Want the whole series for the price of a sandwich? Watch Chimera Squad and XCOM 2 rather than the 2013 pieces.

XCOM 2 moved the series from defence to insurgency, and the concealment mechanic changed how every mission opens. (Official Steam screenshot)

War of the Chosen adds three recurring named antagonists who hunt you across the campaign — the reason most people recommend it alongside the base game. (Official Steam screenshot)

The bottom line

The search term is fine; the purchase it leads to usually is not. Enemy Within on PC is DLC, it requires Enemy Unknown, it is the one XCOM product that does not go cheap, and a better and newer game in the same series currently costs less than it does.

If you take one thing away: check the live figures for all three XCOM listings on their game pages before you buy anything, because the relationships described here are today's, and the individual prices move constantly. The categorisation, though, will not change — that is set in the store data, and it is the part that costs people money.

Related reading: the strategy games worth buying on sale, whether keyshops are safe to buy from, what a "historical low" really tells you, and the best PC games under five pounds.