I Bought the Same Game Twice. Then a Third Time.

It started with The Witcher 3.

I bought it on Steam in 2016 for around $15. Played it for a few hours, got busy with other things, and forgot about it. A couple of years later I got a PlayStation 4 and bought it again — this time from a GameStop bargain bin. Never opened the case. Then in 2022, when everyone started talking about the big update, I bought it a third time on PS5.

Three copies. About $70 total. I basically never played any of them past that first session back in 2016.

I'm not proud of it. But I'm also pretty sure I'm not the only one this has happened to.

Your Games Are Everywhere Now

Gaming used to be simple. You had a shelf. The shelf had games on it. You could see everything you owned just by looking.

That's not how it works anymore.

My games now live on Steam, PlayStation, Xbox Game Pass, Nintendo, GOG, and Epic. Plus a box of physical discs somewhere in my closet. Each platform has its own app. None of them show you what you own on the other ones.

So when I'm up late browsing a Steam sale and I see a game for $5 that I kind of remember wanting to play — I have no easy way to check if I already own it somewhere else. I can try to remember. I can open four different apps and search. Or I can just buy it and find out later.

Most of the time I buy it and find out later.

The Backlog Makes It Worse

Here is the real problem: most of us have way more games than we've had time to play.

If you played every game right after you bought it, you'd remember what you owned. But if you've been buying games for years — especially during sales or with something like Game Pass — your list of unplayed games keeps growing.

I have games on Steam from 2014 I've never even launched. I bought them because they were cheap or because a friend said they were good. Life got in the way. Now they sit there and I don't think about them until I almost buy them again.

When there's a long gap between buying a game and actually playing it, it's easy to forget you own it. That's when the duplicate purchase happens.

The Same Game Has Different Names

Here's something that makes the problem even trickier.

The same game often has slightly different names on different platforms. "God of War" on Steam is "God of War™" on PlayStation. Editions and bundles have different titles. Regional versions sometimes have different names entirely.

So even if you tried to search your memory, the names don't always match up cleanly. It's not as simple as just remembering "oh yeah I have that one."

Who This Happens To

Think about someone who has been buying games across different platforms for the last ten years.

They probably have hundreds of games on Steam, a bunch on PlayStation going back to the PS4 era, some Xbox stuff, a Nintendo library, and a pile of free Epic games they grabbed but never played.

That is a lot of games across a lot of places with no master list anywhere.

This isn't unusual. This is most adult gamers right now.

And none of those platforms will warn you when you're about to buy something you already own somewhere else.

That Feeling When You Realize

There's a specific feeling you get when you discover you bought the same game twice.

It's not a big dramatic moment. It's more like a quiet "oh no." A small embarrassed feeling. You think — wait, I have this already. How did that happen.

For me it was setting up my PS5 and going through my downloads. I saw The Witcher 3 in the list. Remembered my Steam copy. Checked Steam. Found it there too. Added up what I'd spent across all three purchases.

That "oh no" feeling.

The money part stings a little. But what really gets you is realizing the system made it really easy to do this and gave you no help catching it.

The Fix Is Simple — But You Have to Actually Do It

The fix is easy to describe: check what you own before you buy.

The problem is that actually doing that check is a pain. You have to open multiple apps, search multiple libraries, and remember what you're looking for. Most people don't bother. So the duplicate purchases keep happening.

VaultCheck does that check for you automatically. You connect your Steam, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo accounts, and then every time you look at a game in a store, it quietly checks all your libraries. If you already own it somewhere, it tells you before you buy.

It won't help you clear your backlog. It won't make you actually play your games. But it will stop you from buying the same game twice — which honestly shouldn't be this hard to avoid in the first place.