Racing Games & Sims In The 2024 Steam Spring Sale

I finally bought the Simbin bundle, unfortunate that it didn't discount everything I already owned. Also bought all the non-SP DLC for AMS2. It feels good to wait and get a lot of stuff on sale.

Thanks for your suggestions, everyone! Added them to the list. Sifting through the sheer endless list of games in Steam's racing category on a Thursday night tends to make you miss some entries, unfortunately

Another AMS2 content completer here. Now they finally have a 'press this button to buy all you have not got' feature in the store at half price it is a no brainer.

Yannik Haustein said:

Thanks for your suggestions, everyone! Added them to the list. Sifting through the sheer endless list of games in Steam's racing category on a Thursday night tends to make you miss some entries, unfortunately

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it's a rather impressive list, no worries just a few SimBin titles still missing but all in all there's almost everything there is out there

Another Steam sale, another check if rF2 is affordable now. 50% off the "complete" pack sounds really good, but check the details:

Ever wanted to own every piece of rFactor 2 content released? Now you can. Including every DLC car & track* released and currently on sale, the rFactor 2 Complete Pack is the sim’s pinnacle. Check out all rFactor 2 content here - https://www.studio-397.com/cars-tracks/. *Pack does not include Reiza, KartSim or free workshop content

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So the 'complete' pack isn't actually complete - and it costs £85. Half price. The Reiza pack and KartSim pack cost about £17 and £27 (with 25% off the Karts)
So that's about £130 to get all the content for rF2 when it's on sale.

I can't actually think of a sim that has less cars and tracks, and costs more - anyone?

I enjoyed rF2 for a week's trial, but a retail price of over £200 for the whole game just seems ludicrous, given the sims that are available now, with more cars and tracks for less money.

So sorry S397, I'd like to buy your stuff and play your game, but it needs to be cheaper!

justageezer said:

Another Steam sale, another check if rF2 is affordable now. 50% off the "complete" pack sounds really good, but check the details:


So the 'complete' pack isn't actually complete - and it costs £85. Half price. The Reiza pack and KartSim pack cost about £17 and £27 (with 25% off the Karts)
So that's about £130 to get all the content for rF2 when it's on sale.

I can't actually think of a sim that has less cars and tracks, and costs more - anyone?

I enjoyed rF2 for a week's trial, but a retail price of over £200 for the whole game just seems ludicrous, given the sims that are available now, with more cars and tracks for less money.

So sorry S397, I'd like to buy your stuff and play your game, but it needs to be cheaper!

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I guess this is because the Reiza and KartSim stuff isn't S397. They can't discount and add content they don't own to their packs I guess.
So it is up to Reiza and KartSim to do funky stuff with it.

I really wonder not to see raceroom in the list. They strickly follow their price politics even with all the competition.

About AMS2 DLC discount - just don´t need it as long as they do not provide more custom championship slots into the game.

BeamNg is also missing (bizarre)

Triplexbee said:

Another AMS2 content completer here. Now they finally have a 'press this button to buy all you have not got' feature in the store at half price it is a no brainer.

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I'd be careful with that button. For myself, I have what seems to be a flaw in the way Steam recognises (or more the point doesn't) the content I already own.

My AMS2 Steam page is offering myself the "All Inclusive Bundle" for £36 but when I look at what it's offering, the Premium Track Pack and the Premium Expansion Packs, and specifically what those packs offer, I already have the content within those packs yet Steam doesn't declare those packs as essentially being in my library already and wants to charge again for the content.

The Premium Expansion Packs DLC Steam page states the contents being Racin' USA Expansion Packs 1, 2 & 3 which I have all of, yet Steam say's that the bundle pack isn't in my library. The Premium Expansion Pack is trying to sell me 5 tracks (with multiple variants of) which I already own (I've just checked in game and on the individual DLC lists on Steam).

Have I gotten this wrong somehow, as it just doesn't make sense to me?

justageezer said:

Another Steam sale, another check if rF2 is affordable now. 50% off the "complete" pack sounds really good, but check the details:


So the 'complete' pack isn't actually complete - and it costs £85. Half price. The Reiza pack and KartSim pack cost about £17 and £27 (with 25% off the Karts)
So that's about £130 to get all the content for rF2 when it's on sale.

I can't actually think of a sim that has less cars and tracks, and costs more - anyone?

I enjoyed rF2 for a week's trial, but a retail price of over £200 for the whole game just seems ludicrous, given the sims that are available now, with more cars and tracks for less money.

So sorry S397, I'd like to buy your stuff and play your game, but it needs to be cheaper!

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Yeah I bought into £80 worth of rF2 DLC last Black Friday as I'd had one decent evening trialing BTCC around Brands Hatch, and I chose my DLC purchase very carefully so as to get the most efficient bang-for-your-buck content. It took me quite a few months to even bring myself to do that as I often looked at the sales and just thought that rF2 didn't have enough content and for too high a price, so the investment to return ratio was a big turn-off.

I eventually took the leap anyway as it seemed that rF2's unique and best angle was it's very serious take on simulation and felt very authentic because of that. Yet when I've infrequently gone back to the title, the whole experience is very underwhelming in a bare-bones feeling sense, and it seems hard to even find the cars I bought due to the super-janky menus. You have to mod a text file to get the AI to apprear as being human opponents, which isn't our place as consumers to fix. When I've tried to setup a race weekend I ended up being distracted by spending practice sessions just setting up FFB as it never felt quite right to me, and when I actually started to race (with some open wheeler around Macau) the AI always crashed out leading to full course yellows, so it was not a fun or satisfying experience in the slightest.

In fairness I just haven't spent enough time with it to sort through and find a decent racing experience that I'd hopefully purchased, but also in fairness that's partly because I often turn to AMS2 or other titles that are massively more accessible by just being quick and easy to get racing and having fun. I hope that one day I'll enjoy my expensive rF2 content, but I don't hold think it'll be winning any awards for best overall package anytime whatsoever.

Yannik Haustein said:

Thanks for your suggestions, everyone! Added them to the list. Sifting through the sheer endless list of games in Steam's racing category on a Thursday night tends to make you miss some entries, unfortunately

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Thank you for your work. Maybe you could create a wishlist inside Steam with all these titles, including the ones you own, so it's easier to track when creating a list of discounts?

In the theme of Revhead, I did not see My Summer Car in the list either! While it does not have a stated discount, its base price has been knocked down to 8 dollars.

FredBassett said:

CD Keys is fine. Made quite a few purchases over the years. Never had an issue

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As you've been told, the main issue isn't what you as a customer get in terms of a working code or not. Rather how that code was obtained.
There are times where companies (especially smaller ones), decide to not revoke stolen keys, because the potential backlash of people having the game removed from their library, and going on a "my game was taken away from me for no reason" internet-rampage can cause bigger problems than just ignoring it.
However, if the dev and publisher doesn't get any money from it regardless, it is quite obvious they would rather have people pirate their product, instead of paying someone that doesn't have anything to do with the devs and/or publishers.

Large Style said:

I'd be careful with that button. For myself, I have what seems to be a flaw in the way Steam recognises (or more the point doesn't) the content I already own.

My AMS2 Steam page is offering myself the "All Inclusive Bundle" for £36 but when I look at what it's offering, the Premium Track Pack and the Premium Expansion Packs, and specifically what those packs offer, I already have the content within those packs yet Steam doesn't declare those packs as essentially being in my library already and wants to charge again for the content.

The Premium Expansion Packs DLC Steam page states the contents being Racin' USA Expansion Packs 1, 2 & 3 which I have all of, yet Steam say's that the bundle pack isn't in my library. The Premium Expansion Pack is trying to sell me 5 tracks (with multiple variants of) which I already own (I've just checked in game and on the individual DLC lists on Steam).

Have I gotten this wrong somehow, as it just doesn't make sense to me?

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Seemed to be correct for me. I added only 3 DLC tracks individually to the base game previously so the calculation was not too difficult for Steam. It did lag a bit before deducting the value of those three though. Might be worth a few refreshes to see if anything changes for you.

Ole Marius Myrvold said:

An interesting video that is talking about the grey-market resellers.

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Interesting video, thanks for sharing it.

Andrew_WOT said:

Gmg and cdkeys are legit. Use them all the times. But there are others of course, I would not generalize and put them all into the same category.

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I've used CDKeys a couple of times in the past. Before doing so on each occasion I tried and failed to find any evidence that there was something shady about them, but I'm perfectly ready to accept that they may in fact still be dodgy.

Ole Marius Myrvold said:

GreenManGaming is, yes. CDKeys is not official and is the same as the one(s) in the video.

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The ones in the video are selling fraudulently-obtained keys. That's at best shady and at worst criminal.

Every source I can find so far suggests that CDKeys uses regional pricing variations (the "grey" market) to make their money. As far as I'm concerned, this is to be rewarded, because it seems anti-competitive and just plain scummy to price things differently for different markets and then try to prevent people from sourcing stuff from the cheaper location. (Doesn't matter if it's cars, jeans, or computer games.)

Ole Marius Myrvold said:

As you've been told, the main issue isn't what you as a customer get in terms of a working code or not. Rather how that code was obtained.

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Do you have reason to think that CDKeys obtain their keys by dodgy or illegal means?

Neilski said:

Interesting video, thanks for sharing it.

I've used CDKeys a couple of times in the past. Before doing so on each occasion I tried and failed to find any evidence that there was something shady about them, but I'm perfectly ready to accept that they may in fact still be dodgy.

The ones in the video are selling fraudulently-obtained keys. That's at best shady and at worst criminal.

Every source I can find so far suggests that CDKeys uses regional pricing variations (the "grey" market) to make their money. As far as I'm concerned, this is to be rewarded, because it seems anti-competitive and just plain scummy to price things differently for different markets and then try to prevent people from sourcing stuff from the cheaper location. (Doesn't matter if it's cars, jeans, or computer games.)

Do you have reason to think that CDKeys obtain their keys by dodgy or illegal means?

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Similar conclusions to what I came to.

At this point I'd need a game dev to come out and state they know of instances of their games running on stolen or fraudulently obtained keys that that have been sold through CDkeys, and the numbers would have to indicate this is part of the operations general practise and not an abnormality.

If they are just bulk buying keys when they are available at a low price, and reselling with a profit margin, well, that's how all commerce works. Good for them.

So far I've seen lots of vague claims of shady transactions in regards to CDkeys but nothing that carries any real world weight when looking for specifics.

Neilski said:

Every source I can find so far suggests that CDKeys uses regional pricing variations (the "grey" market) to make their money. As far as I'm concerned, this is to be rewarded, because it seems anti-competitive and just plain scummy to price things differently for different markets and then try to prevent people from sourcing stuff from the cheaper location. (Doesn't matter if it's cars, jeans, or computer games.)

Do you have reason to think that CDKeys obtain their keys by dodgy or illegal means?

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I think the discussion about regional pricing is for a different thread. As I think I've posted somewhere here fairly recently, we in Norway used to have favorable regional pricing (woopwoop). Then Steam changed it to also include perceived purchasing power for the people in different countries, which bumped the Norwegian price up. The issue was that our currency also tanked, so it was a double-whammy. I think F1 Manager 2023 ended up costing around 50% more than F1 Manager 2022 in NOK (Norwegian Kroner), while it was the same price for both games at release in EUR, GBP and USD!

Anyway. Granted the post is from 2018, and bumped in 2019, but it is still in the "announcement" forum at SCS Software (the creators of Euro Truck Sim and American Truck Sim.

Key points:

This subject has been brought up before, but recently a number of you have approached us regarding questions about CDkeys today, here's our official answer.

These sites are RE-SELLING steam keys - and you will not be able to know where these steam keys originated from, or how they were acquired. They could be stolen, bought with stolen credit cards or one of many distributors may have lost them (or "lost" them to some of their employees). They may have also been taken from other regions with different pricing - and WILL NOT WORK for your region. There is also a chance they're valid.


Also, these reseller sites do not confirm the identity of the seller. That's the reason, why some of them offer you a "guarantee" in case of steam key you bought doesn't work. That "guarantee" is given with an extra payment and it's no guarantee at all - if the key or card payment shows as being stolen, they WILL be deactivated - leaving you with empty hands and NO WAY to get your money back.

If you want to support the developer, the best way is to buy directly from them, from Steam, or from highly regarded sites like humble bundle, green man gaming and some more. While there are sites who are our official distributors where you are guaranteed to get "good" steam key, Steam and other sites we named are 100% sure that your money go where they should, and that your key is guaranteed safe and legal. And if not - receipts from these WILL get you a good key, or a refund

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This is the official stance from SCS. And while the thread title refers to G2A, Kinguin etc. as well as CDKeys the post specifically mentions CDKeys.

Another thing that makes me feel a bit iffy about CDKeys is things like this:
How is it, if you run a website that sells keys to games, it's all nice and dandy and all that, but somehow, you are "out of stock"? It's not like it is a HumbleBundle with limited keys from the publisher. How are you able to run out of an unlimited amount of keys?

In general this list is advised to follow to be on the safe side, and also support the devs in the best way: https://isthereanydeal.com/shops/ these are what's listed as official key sellers. So, like I said. GreenManGaming is there. CDKeys is not.

These sites are RE-SELLING steam keys - and you will not be able to know where these steam keys originated from, or how they were acquired. They could be stolen, bought with stolen credit cards or one of many distributors may have lost them (or "lost" them to some of their employees). They may have also been taken from other regions with different pricing - and WILL NOT WORK for your region. There is also a chance they're valid.


This falls right into the vague claims and statements I referred to, It points the finger at everyone, and establishes nothing.

Could, may, chance.

Are they yes or no?

If so, who?

How many, what time period?

Metla said:

These sites are RE-SELLING steam keys - and you will not be able to know where these steam keys originated from, or how they were acquired. They could be stolen, bought with stolen credit cards or one of many distributors may have lost them (or "lost" them to some of their employees). They may have also been taken from other regions with different pricing - and WILL NOT WORK for your region. There is also a chance they're valid.


This falls right into the vague claims and statements I referred to, It points the finger at everyone, and establishes nothing.

Could, may, chance.

Are they yes or no?

If so, who?

How many, what time period?

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Of course it will be a somewhat vague statement - because this is the reality. The non-official resellers don't get their keys from the publishers, devs etc. Where they get them, is unknown.
Devolver actively went in and deactivated all keys they found that were connected to unofficial resellers, to avoid these issues, and got tonnes of backlash for it from users who lost access to the game, because Devolver obviously didn't refund them.

Yes or no? I can sell keys on reseller site. If I sell two, one obtained perfectly fine, and one illegal. Then the answer will be yes and no.
And "who"? Is it not clear what sites SCS are mentioning?
How many, and what period? It's extremely rare any goes out with such information. Even Devolver that went public with their "deactivating keys" didn't say how many.
When over 7000 Sniper Elite 3 keys were disabled due to being stolen, and sold at over 50 different sites, they never mentioned which 50+ sites (though, you can find a Steam thread about some losing their game, and what site they bought it from. One mentions CDKeys)
G2A is the most known, and probably the worst. Most likely because they are the biggest, and that they had (have?) so many youtubers and twitchers affiliated.

Anyway. Let's go.

A common misconception is that keys bought from resellers are cheaper because they're "bought in bulk", and they can pass the savings on to the consumer. This is not the case. Instead, these keys typically come from regions where they've been priced for that economic climate. When we buy from sites that resell these keys, we are actively encouraging publishers to increase those regional prices or implement region locks on their games. Also, while not an issue with CDKeys as far as I know. Many resellers are giving some hints about VPN'ing while activating. This is against the Steam agreement and can cause you account to be banned.
If you think about the limited bundles that you might get keys from, and can sell for a profit. Of course, that is a "capitalist marked", but is it really nice to support such business when a dev/publisher are participating in charity, and selling games cheap. Might be a reason why these bundles are so much worse than they used to be...
Then you have the examples in the video I shared on the previous page.

If you wonder why devs/publishers are not naming, shaming and removing fraudulent keys too often, just take a look at the reaction from when Ubisoft removed FC4 that was obtained "less than legal": https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/2tketk/ubisoft_removing_far_cry_4_without_notice_from/
In the thread, there is obviously lots of G2A talk, because they are the biggest, but you will also find, e.g:
"Yep, this happened to me on 24th Jan 2015 with Far Cry 4. I purchased from CDKeys.com.
I contacted the reseller, and they gave me an immediate refund."
While a refund surely is fine for the customer... It was still from CDKeys.
It is also worth noting that the huge backlash cause Ubisoft to backpedal and let anyone who had installed and started to play the game, keep it... So, they had to give in because "the public" would rather have shady sites do shady stuff than buying games from official sites.
Here is the first Sniper Elite 3 article: https://www.vg247.com/sniper-elite-3-steam-key-over-7000-were-stolen-revoked-statement
While here is an article going a bit deeper. And while Rebellion would not "accuse any retailers of foul play - they may well have had good reason to think the keys were genuine". The fact is still, that it only happened to third party resellers, and not official ones. And - the article specifically mentions CDKeys as affected: https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2014/07/02/on-the-trail-of-the-revoked-sniper-elite-3-steam-codes/
UnknownWorlds deactivated 1341 keys that had been sold by "shady key resellers and discount steam keys" without mentioning any sites specifically. But also mentioning it cost them around 30k USD: https://unknownworlds.com/blog/beware-shady-key-resellers-and-discount-steam-keys/
Then, G2A based article where "a scammer explains how he profited on stolen indie game keys"
Here is Factorio-devs posting a blog post, where they to touch the subject of "the grey market" and how it affects them: https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-171
TinyBuild singling out G2A - keys for a value of 450k USD in retail price: https://www.tinybuild.com/single-post/2017/04/28/G2A-sold-450k-worth-of-our-game-keys

Why is G2A brought up so often? Well, like I said. They are the biggest by far, and thus have more of an impact than smaller sites.
Regardless. Some examples of CDKeys being affected.

Then it's up to each and every one to decide what to do, and what feels right.
I would love an explanation for how a completely "legit" site can run out of unlimited keys to games that's still on sale though...

Some good food for thought there, thanks @Ole Marius Myrvold.

Ole Marius Myrvold said:

I would love an explanation for how a completely "legit" site can run out of unlimited keys to games that's still on sale though...

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This bit seems easy - apart from the word "unlimited", which confuses me (because it's not mentioned anywhere in the link you posted - where does it come from?). You just need to assume that a manual purchase of keys is involved; i.e. a human needs to push a button to buy in more keys to restock the pool when they run out.

Neilski said:

Some good food for thought there, thanks @Ole Marius Myrvold.

This bit seems easy - apart from the word "unlimited", which confuses me (because it's not mentioned anywhere in the link you posted - where does it come from?). You just need to assume that a manual purchase of keys is involved; i.e. a human needs to push a button to buy in more keys to restock the pool when they run out.

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Yup. That one I see.
However, if you apply the regional price idea, then there should always be someone wanting to try to earn some money? I mean. I must admit, when I saw how little changes F1 Manager 23 had compared to 22, I did check CDKeys myself. At no time when I have checked CDKeys, have they ever had F1 Manager 23 for sale. Same with Football Manager 24 Console, and some other games.
It's rather strange to never have certain games available. When they've never been off sale, and have always had regional pricing.

Which obviously mean, there is a third party - not any devs or publishers doing business, and we fall back to where I started. Grey market. We don't know where any keys are coming from. While it might work for us as customers, they might as well be stolen, but publishers/devs don't want the immense blowback from deactivating those keys...

I mean, I can get F1 Manager 23 for 66% of the CDKeys price (that they don't have in stock anyway) at Steam now, and even cheaper at Fanatical (1.70EUR cheaper there) which is an official Steam reseller, not a third party grey market. So I don't see the reason to even bother with the grey market stuff.

Also. F1 23. Not a single review for that on the site, "out of stock". Regardless. The historical low on Steam and/or official resellers for that game is half the price that CDKeys lists.

If it is that dependent on individuals getting keys and selling them, so you don't even have more than a single version of any F1 23 game, manager or normal... Even with hefty regional pricing... That doesn't tickle my pickle to put it that way.