Our method
How we price a game and rate it out of ten
The rules behind every review on Worth the Quid: where the prices come from, how the score is built and what keeps us independent.
Our methodology in one line: we price every game the way a careful buyer would at a UK checkout, then weigh that against how good the game is to play. Nobody pays for a place on this site.
Independence and money
Worth the Quid is an independent review publication. We do not use affiliate links, we do not sell sponsored reviews and we do not accept free copies in exchange for coverage. The shops and publishers we write about have no say in what we publish and do not see a review before it goes live.
Should that change, say with a link that pays us a commission, the page concerned will say so plainly at the top, and its score will stay exactly as it was.
How we collect prices
- UK listing, UK account. We read each shop's United Kingdom page for the game and note the price in pounds, including VAT, for every edition and add-on.
- Normal price first. If a sale is running we record it separately with its end date, and base the verdict on the everyday price.
- Payment pages, not marketing pages. Accepted payment methods and refund rules come from each shop's own help and policy pages, which we link from every review.
- Dated and logged. Every review shows the date of its last price check, and the price checks log records what changed.
How we rate a game
The score out of ten combines five weighted parts. The game itself carries the most weight, but a brilliant game with a confusing shop, thin refund rules or a costly add-on treadmill will lose points for it.
| Part | Weight | What we look at |
|---|---|---|
| The game itself | 40% | How good the game is to play for what it asks you to pay: depth, polish and how long it keeps giving, judged from the publisher's own material and the long public record of criticism around it. |
| Price honesty | 20% | Whether the price is clear before you commit: sensible editions, no countdown pressure, no bundles designed to muddle, and currency packs that line up with what the in-game shop actually sells. |
| Ways to pay | 15% | How many UK shops sell it and how many everyday payment methods those shops take, from debit cards to PayPal, phone wallets and gift cards bought at a supermarket till. |
| Safety net | 15% | What looks after you once you have paid: refund windows, purchase confirmations, spending limits for a family account and how painless it is to stop a subscription. |
| Long-run cost | 10% | What it costs to keep enjoying the game after the first purchase: expansions, season passes, subscriptions and anything that has to be bought again. |
What we can and cannot tell you about play
Our notes on what a game is like come from the publisher's own descriptions, patch notes, official trailers and the broad body of published criticism, including aggregate review scores we link to. Where we give a length in hours we say where the figure comes from. We do not invent play sessions, and we do not write "we played" about anything we have not.
How we chose the twelve
We wanted famous, well-reviewed games that show the full range of ways people pay: a single purchase, a one-off purchase with expansions, a game with a built-in currency, a game that lives on one shop, a game that comes with subscriptions. We left out games that sell paid random items, because a purchase with a random outcome cannot be given an honest price.
Corrections
Prices move and we will sometimes be wrong. Tell us and we will check, correct the page and note the change in the log. Corrections are never quietly buried.