The Sifter Promise
You have a right to know how a game will try to take your money — before you pay.
Games are increasingly designed to extract, not just entertain — and the mechanics that do it are hidden on purpose. Sifter reads those mechanics and puts one honest label where the buying decision actually happens: an A–F Design Risk grade. A warning label before you buy — nothing more, nothing paid for.
Our promise to you
You never pay to use Sifter.
Scoring, analysis, recommendations — every feature that helps you decide is free forever. The only things you'd ever pay for are a voluntary donation or an actual game.
No one can buy a better score.
Money never moves a grade — not a studio, not a publisher, not us. Affiliate rates are flat and disclosed; studios can pay for tools and visibility, never for a softer verdict. If Sifter ever ships its own game, it's scored by the same public rubric as everyone else.
We're held to the bar we score others against.
No fake urgency, no dark patterns, no manipulative re-engagement to grow Sifter. If a tactic would cost a game Design Risk points, it doesn't ship here either.
You can check our work.
The methodology is public and version-stamped. Every grade points at the factual checklist behind it. Where our data is inferred rather than hand-verified, we label it “Estimated” and say so — we never dress up a guess as a fact.
Every feature we ship has to survive one question: “Can you still trust Sifter?”
If the answer is no, it isn’t a candidate at all. Independence isn’t a feature here — it’s the whole product.
Your library, your home
Sifter is meant to be the least-friction home for everything you play. Import your Steam library in one click, add games from any platform, see whether a game is yours to keep or can be switched off, know its real price history and whether it’s on Game Pass — all in one place. We remove friction; we never manufacture it to keep you here.