Methodology

Data sources

• CheapShark API (cheapshark.com/api) — primary source. Public, free, permissive terms. Covers Steam, Epic Games Store, GOG, Humble Bundle, Fanatical, GreenManGaming, GamersGate, DLGamer and ~7 more digital stores.
• Steam Storefront API (store.steampowered.com/api/appdetails) — for game metadata enrichment (description, screenshots, genres, developer, Metacritic score, trailer). Cross-walked via the steamAppID CheapShark already exposes.
• RAWG API (free tier, commercial up to 100k MAU) — fallback for non-Steam titles missing in Steam Storefront.

Refresh frequency

Our ETL runs daily at 06:00 UTC. Each run pulls fresh data from CheapShark, recomputes deals, and rebuilds the static site. The timestamp of the last refresh is shown on the home page.

How we calculate

• Lowest price. The minimum sale price reported by CheapShark across all tracked stores for the given game on the day of the refresh.
• Normal price. The store reference price (the list price), as reported by CheapShark. Not a historical lowest — that is a separate concept we are accumulating.
• Discount percentage. (normalPrice − salePrice) / normalPrice × 100, rounded to integer.
• Top deals ranking. Sorted by discount percentage descending; ties broken by absolute price ascending. We publish the full top — no editorial cherry-picking.

Stores we exclude

We do not list grey-market key resellers — Kinguin, G2A, MMOGA, Eneba and similar. Reasoning:

• Documented chargeback issues and stolen-key disputes (G2A paid $39,600 to Wube Software for Factorio keys in 2019).
• Indie devs frequently ask their audience NOT to buy from these markets.
• Listing them hurts E-E-A-T signals and AI Overview citability.

We also do not scrape SteamDB or IsThereAnyDeal. Both explicitly prohibit it in their terms.

What is not yet reliable

Our historical price database accumulates from May 2026 onwards. Phrases like "lowest in the last N days" only apply within our own collected window. We do not import historical data from other sources because ITAD prohibits it in their terms.

Affiliation and ads disclosure

Currently zero affiliate links are active. We are applying to Awin, CJ Affiliate, and store programs (Fanatical, Driffle); when one approves, the disclosure will be added to the footer and to the terms. Display ads (AdSense) will be enabled when the site reaches the policy threshold.