A person or group who have somehow come into possession of Steam keys that haven’t been activated can post them on a reseller site at a price of their choosing, keeping most of the profit (minus a percentage and a small listing fee to the site). Key resellers, like G2A and Kinguin, are a bit different in that they operate almost like a flea market. They also sometimes offer better deals on certain games than Steam does, especially if it’s a developer or publisher selling their own stuff. One advantage to this, especially if you’re buying directly from a developer or publisher’s web store, is that it bypasses the 30 percent cut Valve normally takes and thus gives more support to the people who actually made and marketed the game.

Steam gives out batches of keys directly to publishers and developers who can then sell them to you. While the most straightforward way of getting such a key is by buying a game directly from Steam (in which case you don't need to enter a key), it’s not the only way. What about other stores that sell Steam keys?Įvery game you buy on Steam has an associated, one-time-use key that unlocks it for play. That’s not unusual or excessive, necessarily, but there are other ways to obtain many games that give more support directly to the developer if you care to do so. Steam also takes a 30 percent cut of all sales. Valve’s efforts to curate the storefront have been largely hands-off and lacklustre, allowing large numbers of low-quality games to make it onto the store. It also has so many games on it at this point that it can be hard to find those gems that are really worth playing but don’t enjoy the backing of a major publisher or marketing team among all the noise.

What are the drawbacks? Well, Steam uses an in-house DRM that forces you to launch a game in online mode before you can play it offline, and allows third-party DRM from publishers who sell their games on Steam that may require an always-on connection.

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