Gratuitous Space Battles
Skip · Strategy · 2009
The verdict
SKIP IT.
It scores 26, under the fair line, at $14.99.
- Cost per hour▼
- $5.35/hr
- Reviews▼
- 70% of 891
- Critics
- 72 players 2 lower
- Genre rank
- Top 59% Strategy
Holding it back: Cost per hour, Reviews
Why
Watch this gameOne alert at a price you pick.
Time and effort
- Main story
- 2.8h
- To 100%
- 14.5h 5.2x the story
Price and sales
- Sales
- 62 on record
- Typical cut
- 70% off
- Steam low
- $1.49 November 2022
- Sale every
- 80d last October 2026
Players and genre
- Online
- 0 now
- Cheaper than
- 16% of its genre
- Better reviewed
- 31% of its genre
Price and player charts
The value story
The value story
It has been discounted 62 times in the 14 years tracked here. The median cut across all of them is 70 percent, about 11 weeks apart. Today it is at full price, and its last discount ended about 4 weeks ago.
It is pricier than 84 percent of its genre, and less well reviewed than 69 percent. Among the games that feel like it, The Last Starship ($19.99, scores 28) beats it on value, while it beats Spacebase DF-9 ($9.99, scores 0).
More about Gratuitous Space Battles
2.8 hours to finish it, 15 to exhaust it. The completionist tail is 5.2 times the campaign.
Buy now or wait
Buy now or wait
Next discount: likely in the Winter Sale, Dec 17 to Jan 4, at about $3.74 (75% off). Predictions like this were right 92% of the time when tested on 70 past weeks.
Discounted in each of its last 8 seasonal sales. Last discount ended 31 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
While I know that this game is old and holds at least some nostalgic value, I never played this game, so for me it was a rather disappointing experience. [*] UI is horrible. From being unable to compare 2 items (even though you can compare ALL of the items at once but only by one stat), to extremely annoying process of deployment/making a new ship, to a completely useless post battle stats that give zero real...
2 more reviews, 2 not recommended
GAME UNPLAYABLE DO NOT BUY. I really enjoyed this game when i was younger and while you don't expect a game like this still be worked on so many years later the dev's just abandoned the game without making it playable offline leading to a large part of the game being unplayable as the servers are long shut down. Its shocking practice and they should be ashamed of themselves, stop killing games.
Sad to give this a negitive... i loved this game. I randomly wanted to launch it up today and play a campaign but the online servers are dead and can't validate CD Key so can't play the Campaign... it's barely half a game without it. I can understand a company not being expected to keep servers running forever and for a nearly 20 year old game, but they should of at least made it fully playable without needing those...
Steam reviews, mixed to its ratio and rotated daily. Opinions are theirs.
About the game
The first ever auto-battler game, from way back in 2009Who needs backstory? Who needs resource-gathering? Diplomacy is so last year. Gratuitous Space Battles cuts right to the chase of sci-fi strategy games, and deals with large, completely unjustified space battles between huge opposing space fleets.
Minimum specs
Minimum on the Steam store: 1 GB of memory, 3D Card with 128MB video memory, 297 MB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux.
No data upstream: achievement curve (Steam global achievements).
Cite this score
Gratuitous Space Battles scores 26/100 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/41800/gratuitous-space-battlesReviews 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 Nov 6, price as of Nov 7. A number here look wrong? Tell me and I will check the inputs.