Keyshops vs official stores: we compared 105 popular PC games — keyshops won 80% of the time

Keyshops are one of PC gaming's longest-running arguments — are the savings actually worth it? We stopped guessing and measured it. In July 2026 we compared the cheapest official-store price (Steam, GOG, Epic and other first-party storefronts) against the cheapest authorised-keyshop price for the 105 most popular PC games that are sold on both sides, using live US prices from our own comparison database.

The headline numbers

• Keyshops beat official stores on 80% of the games we compared (85 of 105).
• Where keyshops win, the median saving is 56% (average 49%).
• Buying the whole 105-game basket at official prices would cost $1,108; buying each game at its cheapest source costs $580 — a saving of $528, or 48%.

The biggest gaps we found

• ARK: Survival Evolved — $14.99 official vs $0.32 keyshop (−98%)
• Project Zomboid — $13.39 vs $0.72 (−95%)
• Arma 3 — $29.99 vs $3.70 (−88%)
• The Forest — $4.39 vs $0.57 (−87%)
• Terraria — $4.99 vs $0.95 (−81%)

A pattern worth noting: the deepest discounts cluster on older catalogue titles, where keys circulate from years of bundles and giveaways. On brand-new AAA releases the gap is usually far smaller — sometimes nothing at all.

The honest caveats

Keyshops are not risk-free, and the 20% of games where official stores matched or beat them is not noise. Region-locked keys exist, so do revoked ones, and buyer protection varies by seller — we walk through the whole risk picture in are keyshops safe?. Our own rule of thumb from this data: keyshops are where the savings live for catalogue games; for day-one releases, compare first and let the gap decide.

Methodology

Sample: the 200 most popular games in our 185,000-title database, filtered to the 105 with at least one active official-store offer and one authorised-keyshop offer in the US region on 6 July 2026. “Official” = first-party storefronts (Steam, GOG, Epic and similar); “keyshop” = the authorised resellers we track (Kinguin, GAMIVO, K4G, Fanatical, Eneba and others). Prices are each side's cheapest active offer at comparison time; they move constantly, so treat the examples as a snapshot — every game's live comparison is on its playze.io page.

Want the savings without the homework? Every game page shows official and keyshop prices side by side with the all-time low — start with today's best deals.