Elite Dangerous
Skip · RPG · 2015
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
SKIP IT.
It scores 45, under the fair line, at $19.99.
- Cost per hourS
- $0.18/hr
- Reviews▼
- 77% of 108,213
- Critics
- 80 players 3 lower
- Genre rank
- Top 25% RPG
Holding it back: Monetization, DRM
Why
Watch this gameOne alert at a price you pick.
Time and effort
- Main story
- 113.6h
- To 100%
- 747.8h 6.6x the story
Price and sales
- Sales
- 103 on record
- Typical cut
- 70% off
- Steam low
- $1.99 September 2025
- Sale every
- 36d last October 2026
Players and genre
- Online
- 3,723 now
- Recent reviews
- 75% 30 days
- Cheaper than
- 10% of its genre
- Better reviewed
- 67% of its genre
Price and player charts
The value story
The value story
It has been discounted 103 times in the 12 years tracked here. The median cut across all of them is 70 percent, about 5 weeks apart. Today it is at full price, and its last discount ended about 2 weeks ago.
Its score sits in the top 25 percent of its genre. It is pricier than 90 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 67 percent. Among the games that feel like it, PULSAR: Lost Colony ($19.99, scores 75) beats it on value, while it beats StarMade ($14.99, scores 15).
More about Elite Dangerous
10 of the 800 Steam-purchase reviews sampled here come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written April 2026 to August 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 24 percent of the 5,312 reviews written there were positive, against 77 percent overall, and those are 6 percent of everything written about it. It sells extras on top of the sticker price (currency, free-to-grind); the score docks it lightly for that.
Finishing takes 113.6 hours; clearing it takes 748, which is 6.6 times the campaign.
108,213 reviews stand behind that percentage.
Buy now or wait
Buy now or wait
Discounted in each of its last 8 seasonal sales. Last discount ended 16 days ago.
- Next sale
- Winter Sale, Dec 17 to Jan 4
Sources: IsThereAnyDeal, Valve.
What drives the score
Grades: S best, D weakest
S is the best grade and D the weakest, judged as a buyer. ▲ raises the score, ▼ lowers it, ? is an input we do not have, • is a fact this genre's score does not use. How the grades work
What players say
I left Elite Dangerous about eight years ago because of engineering. What should have been an optional progression system became a mandatory grind that turned ship building into a second job instead of something fun. I recently decided to give the game another chance, hoping years of updates had addressed those problems. Instead, I found that nearly everything about the game feels like trying to run a footrace...
2 more reviews, 1 not recommended
Refund currently pending. Tutorial is a mess and is incomplete. game could be cool potentially -- but if they can't bother to teach you how to play, I'm not interested. The tools you have possess different settings they don't instruct you how to use and I needed a friend to walk me through aspects of the game the tutorial wasn't showing me. When I finished the first half of the tutorial the tutorial stopped giving...
Title: 81 hours in and I finally get it Rating: Recommended Hours Played: 81.0 hrs I am 54 years old. I have been playing video games since the late 70s. I have seen every space game come and go, from Elite on the BBC Micro to Star Citizen's never-ending crowdfunding campaign. So when I say this game surprised me, I mean it. I bought Elite Dangerous on a sale with low expectations. I thought it would be pretty but...
Steam reviews, mixed to its ratio and rotated daily. Opinions are theirs.
About the game
Take control of your own starship and blaze your trail in an ever-changing galaxy. Master the arts of combat, mining and trade or venture out into the unknown across a 1:1 scale universe.
Minimum specs
Minimum on the Steam store: 6 GB of memory, Nvidia GTX 470/AMD R7 240, 25 GB of storage. Windows only.
No data upstream: achievement curve (Steam global achievements).
Cite this score
Elite Dangerous scores 45/100 on the BANG Score (a skip) as of Nov 8, 2026. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/359320/elite-dangerousReviews set the ceiling, and price against real length moves the BANG Score inside it. How it works, and where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Oct 31, price as of Nov 7. A number here look wrong? Tell me and I will check the inputs.