We consider ourselves a research site. Our purpose is to provide you information so that you can make informed decisions on the games you buy. GameScavenger is run and managed by a team of dedicated developers that have a passion for saving money on video games.
Sure... it's currently a team of one, but I'll do my best to make this a website that is helpful, useful, and ultimately aimed at putting games in the hands of gamers. I have lots of ideas, and a little experience. However, I'll need your help to ultimately make this site successful.
I plan to be transparent, and let you be a part of the growth. Check out the information below to better understand where the site is, and where I want to take it. Come back later for more information on how you can be a part of the process.
Our goal is to ultimately become the one place you go in order to educate yourself on the games you are interested in and get notified when you can save some money purchasing them.
We will maintain current and historical prices for games that are sold digitally through the respective game platform's store. Tracking availability will grow as time progresses. Currently, we have tracking for Oculus Quest games, from May 2022 onwards.
You will be able to search for games you are interested in saving money on. When you pull up a game, you will see information about it including: current price, description, box art, OpenCritic score, price history, and more.
Once you have educated yourself on the game, you can decide to track the game. If the game goes on sale, we will email you to alert you of the sale, so you can save some money. No longer will you have to check weekly to see if your games have finally gone on sale. Or, potentially miss out on a sale you did not realize was happening.
Improvements and enhancements will come over time, see the Roadmap below.
Launch the website: First step... make it work! This is currently in progress. We will launch with functionality to get notified about Meta (Oculus) Quest sales for games you are interested in. We hopefully will be up and running before the end of December 2023. I have some commitments I need to finish before moving forward here.
Ongoing Site Improvements: We don't expect the website to launch with zero flaws. It will grow over time. We are not professional web designers... we will grow together.
GameScavenger Reviews: We will provide you with our own thoughts on the games we are playing. They will always start with a TL:DR section, so you can quickly get our takes, and dive in deeper if you decide you would like to.
DLC: Add DLC to our tracking, so you can save on the complete experience of a game.
More Games: We will add other gaming platforms: Playstation Store, Nintendo eShop, Xbox One Store, Epic Games Store, Steam Store
More Sales: We will be adding functionality for getting prices from other sources besides the respective consoles online store. Look at adding prices from Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, etc.
User Account Notification: Get a badge on the site letting you know games you are tracking are now on sale. This could be used along with, or instead of, notification emails based on the users preferences.
Server Hosting: GameScavenger currently running on a Raspberry Pi in my house. By moving to a virtual private server, we can guarantee more performance / uptime. This would add around $5 - $10 a month to our operating cost.
Owned Games: Keep track of games you have purchased. Remove these from search results, etc.
Data Collection Upgrade: Use a professional data collection group. This will allow for quicker, more consistent price updates. Will add around $25+ a month to operating costs
Other Territories: Currently GameScavenger only services the United States. Once we have a solid foundation here, we will look at expanding to other locations throughout the world.
Open to suggestions: What do you want? Feel free to email our feedback email under Connect below
OpenCritic Reviews
We provide games scores from OpenCritic.com. Not all games have been scored by reviewers enough for OpenCritic to provide a score for that game. In those instances you will see a message directing you here to learn more about our game scores instead of a score.
GameScavenger Reviews
We will also provide our own reviews from time to time. These reviews may be for systems that we don't currently track sales for, but plan to in the future. If it is for a system we currently provide tracking on, those scores will be listed on the given game page.
Our reviews will show under the "Latest Articles" section of our homepage, as well as a dedicated "Reviews" page that will be added once we have enough they start falling off the homepage.
We don't get free games from anyone, so reviews will just come as they come. Don't expect day 1 (or before) reviews from us. Many of our reviews may be for games that released quite some time ago.
Our reviews will use a 10 point scale, with as many decimal places as we feel like at a given moment. Sometimes a 7 should really be a 7.5439. Rounding numbers? What is that?
If you hate having to scroll all the way down a page to get a review score... Good News, Everyone! We will have a collapsed TL;DR section you can quickly get that information from at the top of every review. Not using Ads means no reason to require people to scroll past them all for a score.
Currently, the plan is to make money through dontations. GameScavenger does not sell anything. We don't, and never will, make money selling your information. We ask for minimal information from you to setup an account for a reason. We will never provide user information for profit to anyone.
If you would like to contribute, see the Dontate section below.
Currently, this website is making -$8 a month after operating costs.
Operating costs include things like paying for the website domain, electricity, etc.
Profits will be used to maintain the site and make improvements to it. See the Roadmap section.
Let's be honest here, I don't expect this website to pull in a ton of money for me. This is a passion project, the real goal with profits is just for the site to pay for itself each month.
I'll will figure out donations later. ;)
If you really want to throw money at me, and can't wait, feel free to email [email protected], and we will sort it out.