The online gaming industry’s earnings and popularity have both gone through the roof in recent years. Dozens of titles have reached worldwide acclaim, and people are continually looking for new games or second (or third) parts of already existing ones. The quest for entertainment is never-ending.
And it makes perfect sense, too: few things in life are as exciting as completing that incredibly hard mission or defeating your peers in a multiplayer tournament. Online gaming is competing with streaming as the most popular way to kill time in a fun way these days.
However, as it happens with all “guilty pleasures” in life, online games are expensive. Of course, that can depend on your budget and possibilities, but let’s just say that not every household can afford to be buying multiple titles with each passing month.
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The importance of savings
That is why people are constantly looking for ways to cut down the costs of this activity without having to give up too much in ways of entertainment. It is perfectly understandable: imagine you are planning a family trip. Of course, you are going to look for the cheaper ticket prices, aren’t you? More so if your journey includes your kids, nephews, and cousins.
Fortunately, the analogy doesn’t end there. The use for VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) as unblocking and accessibility tools with the intention of opening foreign websites and gaining access to cheaper flight tickets has extended to the online gaming industry.
As it turns out, games don’t always cost the same in different countries. That might be attributed to several reasons, including marketing and licensing, not to mention the popularity of the title in that specific location.
Beat location-based pricing
However, gaming platforms such as Origin, Blizzard, and Steam (just to name a few) can, and do, vary their prices depending on the location. The most expensive areas tend to be North America, especially the United States, and Europe.
Thanks to the VPN ability to spoof people’s location (more on that later) and let them acquire a temporary IP address from virtually any country, users can get access to other countries’ version of gaming platforms, in which some titles may be cheaper than where you currently are.
In this piece, we will explain you everything about the Virtual Private Networks, how do they work, and how you can use them to buy games cheaper online. It is a very straightforward process that doesn’t take a whole lot of your time nor money.
List of popular games
The online world is filled with options for all tastes. There are tons of games in different areas: sports, action, fighting, adventures, fantasy, about movies or series, and many more.
The most popular video games to play online, regardless of year, are:
- FIFA
- Pro Evolution Soccer
- Overwatch
- Call of Duty
- Battlefield
- World of Warcraft
- Fallout 4
- Minecraft
- Assassins’ Creed
The fantastic world of online gaming
If you are a millennial, you probably got to know tons of gaming consoles: the Atari, the Sega, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), the revolutionary Nintendo 64, the Game Cube, Play Station and Xbox in all of its versions, the Nintendo Wii, and even the Game Boy for a more portable experience.
However, you might be surprised (or not so much, really) to know that gaming has been slowly migrating to a more Internet-oriented experience. Consoles are still a thing, but PC gaming has also gained some steam, and both are dominated by connectivity.
Bluetooth headsets with microphones, enormous screens and/or TV’s, W-Fi internet connection, modern controls, keyboards, mouses, and joysticks are the trendy hardware and digital requirements to get the best out of online gaming. That way, you could play with people who are in other countries, thousands of miles away and talk directly at them in a live fashion.
Buy Games Cheaper Online
As online shopping has been, for years, the most convenient way to acquire things – you don’t even have to get up off your bead, really – the activity has extended to the gaming world. People not only purchase titles from the comfort of their homes but also, they keep up with development firms to get to know the release dates of certain titles to be among the first people to buy them.
Online shopping, and online gaming shopping to be more specific, has become the norm in a society in which the most influential markets can save a few bucks in gas by not having to go to the store in order to acquire the title.
Now, games aren’t always cheap, as we have already told you. The price usually goes up with the title’s popularity and worldwide reach. Studies have shown that video games can be up to four times more expensive as movies, for example, so you have to be a real fan if you are going to make the investment.
The costs of the games make sense if you analyze it from the developers’ view: it is by far more expensive to produce and develop a game than a movie, and it takes significantly more time, too. Even years, in some cases.
The costliest games in history required millions of dollars to produce, so it all adds up. Some of the most expensive titles have been Red Sea Crossing at nearly $15,000, Atlantis II at $6,000 – $7,000, and ET: The Extra Terrestrial, at $1,500.
Fortunately, some of today’s available titles are more adjusted to the reality, and usually cost between $40 and $200, depending on the game, location, and development cost. The difference in price from country to country might be significant, so it would be beneficial for you to consider a VPN to buy games cheaper online.
How much do costs differ between countries?
Take the example of the Assassins Creed Origins game. It costs $39.50 in China (¥248), $42.99 (P2239) in the Philippines, $43.99 in Pakistan, $50.16 (689000 IDR) in Indonesia, $53.85 in India, $56.71 (RM219) in Malaysia, $59.99 in the United States, and $70.34 (£49.99) in the United Kingdom.
If you live in the United Kingdom and are an avid Assassins Creed fan, think about how much money you can save if you use a VPN service provider to spoof your location and gain a temporary China IP address to buy the title as if you were there. The math is simple: we are talking about $30.84 savings!
A similar thing happens with Fallout 4. If you are in the European Union (EU) zone, the game costs €29.99 on Steam. However, acquiring a British IP address may make you pay only £19.99, which equals to something in the neighborhood of €23.
VPN technology to the rescue
Virtual Private Networks, or VPN as the term has been shortened, are online encryption resources that allow customers that hire them to enjoy a series of benefits that no other tool can offer. They can provide privacy because they hide the person’s IP address, which is the most obvious way to be tracked online and promotes anonymous browsing, without having to worry about hackers, governmental surveillance agencies, and other prying eyes, even Internet Service Providers.
They implement technologies known as protocols to create a virtual tunnel that will hide the user’s IP address and relevant connection data (browsing history, traffic, connection time, and others) and send them to remote servers, away from the sticky hands of ISPs looking to keep logs of your activity.
One of the most popular benefits of VPN clients or apps is their ability to let people connect with several countries without having to move physically. That is done by having dozens, hundreds, and in some cases thousands of virtual servers and IP addresses from different locations, that customers can adopt and gain temporary access to pages, services, and shopping networks of other nations.
That is how people can find cheaper flight tickets and online games. For example, if you are in the UK but badly want to buy Assassins Creed, you can sign in to your VPN account, connect to a Chinese server, and enter the page of your game developer or online shop. Your connection will have all the looks of a Chinese one, and the title will be substantially cheaper.
Gamers love VPN apps because, in addition of letting them buy games cheaper online, they can help users avoid the dreaded DDoS attack, they fight ISP throttling, and they offer the opportunity to switch servers in your quest for faster speed.
How to buy games cheaper online with a VPN
- Find a VPN service with servers in several countries and subscribe to it.
- Download the VPN app or client on your device or gadget after the subscription has been completed.
- Launch the VPN app in your device.
- Sign in with the credentials you provided in the registration phase.
- Choose one of the nation’s servers that has a lower price for the game you desire to acquire.
- Connect to the server.
- Open the website where you will acquire the game. It can be Steam, Origin, Blizzard, or a local online shop.
- Look for the Game.
- Add it to the Cart.
- Purchase, download, and enjoy!
Best VPN to buy games cheaper online
TorGuard
With over 3,000 servers in more than 55 nations, TorGuard is a perfect solution to find places for cheaper games online. It provides DDoS protection in some servers, and has a lovely customer service and live chat if you have any doubts about the offerings. You can connect up to five different devices at the same time. It costs $10 per month.
Private Internet Access
PIA may not have the biggest server network when it comes to nations available for connection at 29, but it does have a huge amount of servers, with more than 3,500. It offers secure Wi-Fi, unlimited speeds, bandwidth, and server switching, and is incredibly easy to install and use for gamers. It is cheaper than the other two, too, at $6.95 per month.
In conclusion, online gaming is an extremely popular activity that numerous people in the world have learned to enjoy. However, games can be really expensive, and if you are in certain markets, the prices may be impossible to pay.
Fortunately, the VPN technology is available at very low prices, and you could take advantage of its ability to spoof people’s location to enter new markets and buy games cheaper online.
