Some low-value GAs and a half-baked idea

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EDIT: Okay, looks like I hadn't thought this all the way through. Plus it's aimed at a more casual audience. I was more excited when thinking about how to organize it, so I guess I should focus on a more general idea. Is there a different service you would find helpful?

Obligatory giveaways (level 1+), end Sep 30:
Twist of Destiny
Spaceguard 80
M1: A Death in the Desert
Mustache Politics Shooter
Vangers
Galactic Lords
Walhall
Simple Light Cycles
Perfect Heist
Marooners
Skulls of the Shogun
These are slightly older keys; if the key doesn't work, please agree to delete the giveaway and I'll give you a different game. Sorry for the low quality.

Hi everyone! So I've been looking for ways I can be helpful and support myself while doing what I love with gaming. My favorite idea so far is for a service where you tell me what game(s) you want and about how much you want to pay for them (there can be lots of other fine-tuning too). Then I'll monitor sales, specials, deals, bundles, etc on as many sites as possible, and when I find a sale that meets your criteria, I'll buy the game for you. That way you don't have to spend time digging through all the sales on hundreds of games that are always going on just to find the few games you want. Or if you don't even know where to start, you can just leave it to me and I'll get you what you want at a good price. You almost never need to pay full price for a game.

I have almost two years of experience with getting the best possible deal and I have access to exclusive programs like Humble subscriber discounts and Green Man Gaming VIP discounts.

Obviously, to make it worth the time I would spend on this, I would need to charge a kind of finder's fee along with the price I paid for the game. I was thinking somewhere between 5% and 10% of the game's retail price. What do you feel would be a reasonable price? I'd also be open to a trade of games instead, I have several years of collecting I'm still catching up on :P.

I could also offer other related services, such as unknown key checking against my large library, pre-ordering for you if you're waiting for the next paycheck, and anything else I can do with the experience I have.

So what do you think, does this sound like a worthwhile service? Is there a way it could be better? Is there something else that would be more helpful to you? Thank you for reading!

5 years ago*

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Good idea or bad idea?

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Sign me up!

Sounds good, but not something I'd use.

I'm not so sure.

Potato

17 Comments

dingbat

doesn't "is there a deal" let you create alerts, so you'll know when a game you want is on sale for a certain price?
Why would someone pay you for a service that's available for free?

Take that out of the equation, and there's still a problem.
Think how much time and effort goes into monitoring every possible source for such a game, at all times? If you don't check in every single day, you might miss the deal. The amount of time you'll spend looking will be disproportionate to your earnings for all but the latest AAA games. Particularly as your fee needs to be included - if I set a maximum price of $10, you'll need to wait for the sale price to go below that.

Have you looked into steamtrades? you'll notice there are a lot of traders there. And that's a great way to leverage any discounts you might have. For example, during the last namco build-you-own bundle, it was possible for you to buy Tekken 7 for $4.80. At the time, you could probably have sold it for $5 or $6, and if you were willing to hold on to it, I'm sure you could find a buyer for $7.50 today
The big risk there is, sometimes the value of a game on the trading market goes up, but sometimes it craters (particularly if it gets bundled).

5 years ago*