Every Stranger Things Game Costs More Than Its Price Tag

Five results. That is everything Steam's own store search returns for "Stranger Things", and the number is smaller than it looks. Four of the five will not start until you have bought a different game first. The fifth needs a headset. And the pixel-art one that most people actually remember playing — the season three tie-in — is not in the list at all.

This is a shopping question with a genuinely annoying answer, so we went and priced the whole thing rather than summarising a store page. Everything below came from the seller's own endpoint with the country pinned, on 19 August 2026.

That last detail is not pedantry. When we opened the ordinary Steam page from where we sit, the storefront quoted us in Korean won. The same catalog, asked through Steam's API for the United States, comes back in dollars and labels the currency in the response. We use the second one, because converting the first would mean inventing a number and printing it as a price.

What Steam actually sells today

Not one of the five was discounted when we checked; all five came back at full price. Added up, the set costs $93.95. Nobody should buy the set, and the reason is the column marked Type.

Four of them are add-ons, and Steam says so in one line

Open any of those four pages and there is a grey box near the top that most write-ups never quote. On both Dead by Daylight chapters it reads: "This content requires the base game Dead by Daylight on Steam in order to play." On the Hellfire Club module: "This content requires the base game Fantasy Grounds VTT on Steam in order to play." On the 2019 D&D set, the wording is looser — "This content requires one of the following products to play" — and Steam files the page under Fantasy Grounds Classic in its own breadcrumb.

So the entry price for the newest, most talked-about item is not $11.99. Dead by Daylight itself is $19.99, which makes the real cost of walking into the Upside Down as Vecna $31.98.

The fifth product, Stranger Things VR, is the only standalone purchase here — and only in the software sense. Tender Claws' own page for it says the game is "Available on Meta Quest, PS VR2, and Steam!", which is another way of saying you need a virtual reality headset in the house.

Which gives a blunt summary: not one of the five is something you can buy tonight and play on an ordinary laptop without buying something else too.

Vecna arrived in January, and Eleven came with him

The newest item on the list is also the reason this question is being asked again. Steam's own description of Chapter 2 is specific: it "includes a new Killer, Vecna, The First, and new Survivors, Dustin Henderson and Eleven," and buying it "unlocks the Mind Flayer Badge and the Bloody Rainbow Room Banner."

Behaviour Interactive's own chapter page carries the same two names as its headline features — a "Bloody Rainbow Room" described as "A new door has been opened," and a "Mind Flayer" described as "A cluster of particles from another dimension." Two first-party sources, same content, no discrepancy. That is a duller sentence than we usually get to write, and we mean it as a compliment.

The 2019 chapter is still sold alongside it, at the same $11.99, and its Steam description is vaguer: "a new Killer and two new Survivors" as the Entity "descends upon the midwestern town of Hawkins, Indiana." Buying both chapters plus the base game comes to $43.97.

One thing worth being honest about before anyone spends the $31.98. Dead by Daylight is a competitive online horror game where four players are hunted by a fifth. It is not a Stranger Things story with a beginning and an end. If what you wanted was Hawkins in narrative form, this is the wrong purchase at any price.

The one where you are the monster

Stranger Things VR is the closest thing to a proper game on the list, and the most unusual pitch. Steam's description: you "experience the world of Stranger Things from the never-before-seen perspective of Vecna as he explores unknown realities, forms the hive mind, and enacts his plan for revenge against Eleven and Hawkins."

Its developer, Tender Claws, puts it more plainly on its own site — "Play as Vecna. Become an explorer of unknown realities as you form the hive mind and tame the void" — and stamps the page "STRANGER THiNGS: ™/© Netflix. 2024. All Rights Reserved." That licensing line is the part that matters for our purposes: this is an authorised product, not a lookalike.

What we did not price: the Meta Quest and PS VR2 versions. Tender Claws names all three storefronts, we could only read Steam's with the country pinned, and quoting a headset store's number we had not verified would be the same mistake as converting the won figure. If you own a Quest, check the Quest store; do not assume it matches $24.99.

Two of the five are not video games at all

The Fantasy Grounds pair are tabletop material — Dungeons & Dragons content converted for a virtual tabletop, not something you launch and play.

The 2019 Starter Set is described by its publisher as including "rulebook, adventure book, pregens, tokens, and Fantasy Grounds automation." The 2025 module is the digital form of the Hellfire Club box, built around "Eddie Munson's lost D&D campaigns" — the same Hellfire Club whose hand-drawn shirt we traced back to its actual artist. Steam dates that one 7 October 2025.

Read its own product line carefully, though: "Join 3-5 players in a collaborative game." You are not buying an evening's entertainment for $19.99. You are buying material for a group you already have, run through software you already know.

And here we stop short of a total. Steam lists the base application, Fantasy Grounds VTT, with a free demo and a free play option, and its API would not return a price for it at all. We could not establish from a first-party page whether a paid license tier is additionally required to run purchased modules, so we are not going to publish a figure for what these two really cost a newcomer. If you already run Fantasy Grounds, the prices in the table are your prices. If you do not, treat them as a floor.

The same five downloads, four different price tags

Our readers are mostly in four countries, and Steam sets each market separately, so we asked it four times.

We are deliberately not converting those into one another. Platform, not currency, is usually the wider gap anyway: the same Bluey game is $39.99 on Steam and $14.99 on a phone. Each column is what that market is charged, full stop; whether an Australian is paying more than an American in real terms depends on the day's exchange rate, and guessing at it is how sites end up printing numbers nobody can check.

The two you can play on your phone are not for sale

Here is the part that reframes everything above. As of 19 August 2026, two Stranger Things games are sitting in the App Store, both published by Netflix, Inc., and both cost nothing to install:

• Stranger Things: 1984 — a retro adventure around Hawkins and the Upside Down, last updated in January 2026
• Stranger Things 3: The Game — the season three tie-in, twelve playable characters, two-player local co-op, last updated in May 2026

Both are still being maintained, which is not nothing for licensed games with a show that has ended. And the second one is the game Steam does not have. Its search returns no result for the title and none for its original developer, while returning five other Stranger Things products quite happily. We did not find a first-party statement explaining that gap, so we are not going to narrate a delisting we cannot document — only tell you where the game is now, which is on the phone in your pocket.

"Free" is doing some work in that sentence. Netflix's own help page says its mobile games are "Included with your Netflix membership," with "No ads. No extra fees. No in-app purchases," and that you need an active membership, an internet connection, and iOS or iPadOS 17 or higher — or Android 9 or higher.

So the true price is a Netflix subscription, and that is the one number on this page we could not measure. Netflix's plans and pricing page answered our request in Korean won, because that is where we were sitting when we asked. We are not going to convert it and present the result as your monthly bill. Open your own Netflix account page; that figure is the only accurate one.

The cheapest honest way in

Four situations, four different right answers.

If you already play Dead by Daylight, Chapter 2 at $11.99 is straightforward, and it is the only place Eleven and Dustin exist as playable characters.

If you own nothing and want the newest thing anyway, budget $31.98, not $11.99, and go in knowing you are buying a competitive multiplayer horror game with Stranger Things characters in it.

If there is a VR headset in the house, Stranger Things VR at $24.99 is the only item on the list built as a Stranger Things experience rather than a crossover — and playing as Vecna rather than against him is a genuinely odd premise for licensed merchandise.

If none of the above, the answer is the free ones, and we would not spend a penny before trying them. They are the two most people mean when they ask this question, they run on a phone, and if you already pay for Netflix — the way you probably watched Eleven's wetsuit turn up in the season five trailer — you are done.

The two Fantasy Grounds modules we would leave alone unless you are already running a table. They are good D&D material sold to people who own a virtual tabletop, and a shopper who buys one expecting a Stranger Things game will have bought a stack of PDFs and tokens. The 2025 module is named for Eddie Munson, whose B.C. Rich Warlock now survives only as a $45.99 mini that does not play.

FAQ

Is there an official Stranger Things game? Several. Steam sells five Stranger Things products — one full game and four add-ons — and Netflix publishes two more as free mobile games for its members. There is no single flagship Stranger Things title.

How much does Stranger Things VR cost? $24.99 on Steam in the United States, checked on 19 August 2026 with no discount running. It was £20.99 in the UK, CDN$ 32.50 in Canada and A$ 36.50 in Australia on the same day. We did not verify the Meta Quest or PS VR2 prices.

Do I need Dead by Daylight to play the Stranger Things chapters? Yes. Steam's page for both chapters states that the content requires the base game Dead by Daylight in order to play. The base game is $19.99, so the cheapest complete route to Chapter 2 is $31.98.

What is in Dead by Daylight: Stranger Things Chapter 2? Per Steam's own listing: a new Killer, Vecna, The First, plus Dustin Henderson and Eleven as Survivors, and it unlocks the Mind Flayer Badge and the Bloody Rainbow Room Banner. It was released on 27 January 2026.

Is Stranger Things 3: The Game still on Steam? Not today. Steam's store search returns no result for the title. The same game is on the App Store, published by Netflix, free to install with a Netflix membership, and was last updated in May 2026.

Are the Netflix Stranger Things games really free? They cost nothing on top of a Netflix membership. Netflix's help page says its mobile games carry no ads, no extra fees and no in-app purchases, but an active membership is required — so the price is whatever your Netflix plan costs where you live.

Which Stranger Things game is the cheapest way to start? The free mobile ones, if you already subscribe to Netflix. If you want something on a PC, it is Dead by Daylight plus Chapter 2 at $31.98 — and that is a multiplayer horror game, not a story mode.

Are the Fantasy Grounds Stranger Things sets video games? No. They are Dungeons & Dragons material for a virtual tabletop, priced at $24.99 and $19.99, and the newer one's own description asks for 3 to 5 players. You also need the Fantasy Grounds application, and we could not confirm whether a paid license tier is required on top.