The Same Bluey Game Is $39.99 on Steam and $14.99 on a Phone

"TRY BEFORE YOU BUY." That is the opening line of the App Store description for Bluey's Quest for The Gold Pen, in capitals, written by the studio that made the game. It is a more honest sentence than most children's software gets, and it is also why the same game can cost a household $14.99 or $39.99 depending entirely on which screen the child happens to be holding.

We went and measured all of it, because a Bluey game is a purchase made by a tired adult at nine at night and there is no good reason for it to be confusing. Every figure below came from the seller's own endpoint with the country pinned, checked on 22 August 2026: Valve's store API for the Steam prices, Apple's own product pages for the App Store unlocks, and the official Bluey site run by BBC Studios for what exists at all.

That country-pinning is not fussiness. Asked from where we sit, ordinary store pages have handed us Korean won before, and converting a won figure into dollars would mean inventing a number and printing it as a price. So we asked each storefront to answer as the United States, then as the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, and we took the currency label out of the response rather than off the page.

Twenty-five dollars, and both ends of it are first-party

Steam sells Bluey's Quest For The Gold Pen for $39.99. Valve's API returns that as the final price with no discount running, credits Halfbrick Studios as developer and PM Studios as publisher, marks it Windows-only, and dates the release 28 May 2026.

Apple's listing for the same title is free to download. Apple's own product page then lists exactly one in-app purchase, named "Full Game", at $14.99. Not a bundle, not a season pass, not a currency — one line, one price, and Apple prints it on the page itself rather than hiding it behind a purchase flow.

Halfbrick describes the arrangement plainly in its own store copy: play the free experience, then unlock the whole game with one payment and no ads. Twenty-five dollars separates the two routes into the same story.

We are going to stop short of saying the two builds are identical. Nobody at either company has published a content comparison, and we have not run both. What we can say is narrower and still useful: it is the same title, from the same developer, with the same creator credit, and the cheaper one is the one Apple sells.

The scale of interest is not in doubt. Apple's API returns 53,557 ratings for the phone version, averaging 4.6. Whatever else the pricing is doing, it is not a rounding error affecting a handful of families.

A hundred and sixty-nine days

Apple dates the mobile release 10 December 2025. Steam dates the PC release 28 May 2026. That is 169 days in which the only way to play this game on a computer was to not play it on a computer.

The gap matters for one specific reason. A household that bought the unlock in December and then discovered a PC or console version in May does not get credit for the first purchase. Neither storefront advertises any cross-buy with the other, and we found no mention of one on either listing. The $14.99 and the $39.99 are two separate transactions for the same story, and the second one is not a discount on the first.

Halfbrick's own page for the game carries a "Where to Buy" tool with seventeen entries in its region list, and its platform picker offers Xbox, Switch, Switch 2, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. It does not price any of them. The official Bluey site says the game is "out now on App Store and Android, PC and Console" and calls it "An original story by Joe Brumm" — the show's creator — and also names no figure.

Four markets, and the phone is cheaper in every one of them

Our readers are mostly in four places, and both storefronts set each market separately, so we asked each of them four times — the same exercise we ran on Steam's five Stranger Things products, four of which require a different game before they will start. The numbers below are what the seller quoted in that market's own currency; we have not converted anything into anything.

We are deliberately not converting those columns into each other. What can be compared across currencies is the ratio inside each market, and it is not the same ratio everywhere. In the United States the Steam price is a bit over two and a half times the phone unlock, and in the UK a bit under three times. In Canada and Australia it is roughly three and a quarter times.

Australia sits in the more expensive half of that spread, which is a slightly absurd thing to be able to write about a show made in Brisbane by an Australian studio for an Australian broadcaster.

"Free" is carrying most of the weight

Three of the four Bluey apps in the App Store cost nothing to install — as do three of the five App Store apps F1 The Movie's cinematographer actually used on set. None of the three is free to finish, and each of them charges in a different shape.

Bluey's Quest for The Gold Pen is the cleanest of the three: one unlock, $14.99, no ads, and the developer says so up front.

Bluey: Let's Play!, from Budge Studios, is the oldest of them — Apple dates it to August 2023 and shows a version updated on 17 August 2026, so it is still being maintained. Its Apple page lists four in-app purchases, and every one is a monthly subscription at $9.99 in the United States. Budge's own description ends with the sentence that matters: a paid subscription is required to access some app content. There is no one-off purchase option listed at all.

LEGO Bluey, from StoryToys, splits the difference and then some. Its description marks one play pack — Garden Tea Party — as free, and Apple's page lists ten in-app purchases behind it: a monthly subscription at $6.99, a yearly at $39.99, a second monthly tier at $4.99, and six named play packs at $4.99 each — Around the House, Beach Day, Bedtime, Christmas at the Heelers, Playground Fun and The Grannies. Buying all six packs outright comes to $29.94. This is the digital cousin of the plastic range, and we have separately walked through every easter egg LEGO built into the Heeler house set.

Here is where we stop being able to help. Both subscription apps list more than one monthly tier at more than one price on the same page, and Apple's listing does not say which one a given household would actually be offered. We are not going to guess at a number a reader would be charged monthly. Open the app's own purchase screen and read it there; that is the only figure that will be true for you.

One arithmetic point is worth making anyway, because it reframes the whole page. A year of the $9.99 monthly subscription is $119.88. The most expensive Bluey game on Steam is $39.99. Three times that is $119.97. The subscription costs nine cents less per year than buying the priciest Bluey game outright, three times over.

The 2023 game the official site does not mention

Bluey: The Videogame is still on Steam at $29.99, released 17 November 2023, developed by Artax Games and Casual Brothers and published by Outright Games. Valve's API lists no add-on content for it and no discount was running when we checked. Its own store description promises four interactive adventures and local multiplayer, which makes it the only title here built for two people on one sofa rather than one child on one screen.

It is also missing from a place you would expect to find it. The official Bluey site's games shelf lists three titles — the Gold Pen, Let's Play and Happy Snaps — and this is not one of them.

We are not going to read a delisting into that. The game is on sale, at full price, today; a licensor's marketing page is not a catalog and there are a dozen dull commercial reasons a 2023 title might drop off one. But if you are a parent trying to work out what the official Bluey games are by looking at the official Bluey website, you will not be told this one exists, and that is worth knowing before you conclude it is a knock-off.

Across the four markets it runs £24.99, CDN$ 35.99 and A$ 41.95, and the two paid Bluey games on Steam together come to $69.98 in the United States.

A fifth game with a pre-order button and no number

Bluey's Happy Snaps is made by Gameloft Brisbane, in what the official site describes as close collaboration with Ludo Studio and BBC Studios. Bluey and Bingo find Dad's old camera and photograph their way around locations from episodes including Ice Cream and The Sign. It is announced for PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series X and S, Switch and Switch 2, and PC, with a physical retail edition in selected markets.

It has a Steam page marked coming soon, dated only "2026". Valve's API returns no price object for it at all — not zero, not a placeholder, nothing. The official site offers a pre-order route and names no figure either.

So there is a button and there is no price, which is the ordinary state of an unreleased game and still worth saying out loud on a page whose entire job is telling you what things cost.

What we did not manage to price

Android. Google Play does not give us a country-pinned endpoint we can read the way Apple and Valve do, so we have no Google Play figure and we are not going to assume it matches Apple's.

The console versions. The Gold Pen is on Switch, Switch 2, PlayStation and Xbox, and Happy Snaps is coming to all of them, and we did not verify a single console price from a platform holder's own endpoint. If you are buying for a Switch, check the Switch store; the Steam number on this page is not your number.

Whether the Steam build and the phone build contain the same thing. Same title, same studio, same story credit, and beyond that we do not know.

One more note from the checking itself, since it cost us the most time. Five videos came back for this game presented as official trailers. Asked who had actually uploaded them, YouTube's own endpoint answered IGN three times, GameTrailers once and a Brazilian re-upload channel once. Not one of the five was posted by anyone who made the game. The trailer at the top of this page is the one Halfbrick put on its own channel, which is the only reason it is here.

What we would do with the $39.99

If there is an iPhone or iPad in the house, this is not a close call. Install the Gold Pen for nothing, let the child play the free portion, and only then decide whether $14.99 is worth it. The developer built that trial deliberately and told you about it in capital letters; taking it up is the entire recommendation, and it is the one route on this page where you cannot lose money on a game your kid bounces off in ten minutes.

Pay Steam's $39.99 only if a Windows PC is genuinely the screen this will be played on, or if you want it on a television with a controller — Valve lists full controller support, and a five-year-old with a gamepad is a different experience from a five-year-old with a touchscreen.

The $29.99 for Bluey: The Videogame is the one purchase here we would defend on its own terms rather than on price. It is the only Bluey title built for local multiplayer, and playing alongside a child is not the same product as handing one a device.

The subscriptions we would not start without a calendar reminder to cancel. That is not a criticism of either app; it is what a recurring charge attached to a preschooler's interests does. Interests change faster than billing cycles, and $119.88 a year is real money for something nobody in the house has opened since March.

FAQ

How much is Bluey's Quest for The Gold Pen? It depends on the screen. Steam charges $39.99 in the United States, checked on 22 August 2026 with no discount running. The App Store version is free to install and Apple lists a single in-app purchase called "Full Game" at $14.99. Both figures are the seller's own.

Is Bluey's Quest for The Gold Pen free? The download is. The developer's own description says to play the free experience and then unlock the whole game with one payment and no ads, and Apple lists that payment at $14.99 in the United States. So there is a genuinely free portion, and a paid game behind it.

Why is the Bluey game cheaper on the App Store than on Steam? Neither company has published a reason, and we are not going to invent one. What we can confirm is that both prices are current, both come from the seller's own listing, and no discount was running on either when we checked.

Is Bluey: The Videogame still for sale? Yes. Steam lists it at $29.99, released 17 November 2023, published by Outright Games, with no add-on content and no discount at the time of checking. It is worth knowing that the official Bluey site's games page does not list it, which is not the same as it being delisted.

Is Bluey: Let's Play! free? Only to install. Apple's page for it lists four in-app purchases and all of them are monthly subscriptions, priced at $9.99 in the United States, and Budge Studios' own description states that a paid subscription is required to access some app content. There is no one-off unlock listed.

Does the LEGO Bluey app cost money? The app is free and one play pack, Garden Tea Party, is marked free in the developer's description. Apple then lists ten in-app purchases, including six named play packs at $4.99 each and subscription tiers at $4.99 and $6.99 a month and $39.99 a year. Buying the six packs individually comes to $29.94.

When is Bluey's Happy Snaps out, and what will it cost? The official Bluey site says later in 2026 and its Steam page says only "2026". No price has been published anywhere we can read — Valve's API returns no price for it, and the official site names none — so anyone quoting you a figure today is guessing.

Which Bluey game is the cheapest way to start? The free portion of Bluey's Quest for The Gold Pen on an iPhone or iPad, which costs nothing and needs no subscription. If it lands, the full unlock is $14.99. That is the least amount of money it is possible to spend before finding out whether your child likes it.