You've probably read -or at least heard mentioned- the news story that
Steam users have spent $19 billion USD on games they've never played.*
(If so, you've probably also heard some wag jokingly claim, "Yeah,
well, I'm probably responsible for $1 billion of that"**.) You may
even have heard counters to this estimate, calling it wildly
inaccurate (something I myself tend to agree with).
Still, regardless of the actual value, I think it is indisputable that
a lot of people have a lot of games they have never installed, much
less played. It's the nature of the industry now; there are just /SO/
many games available, and there's only so much time in the day to play
them. Add to that calculation that games are, on the whole, getting
longer and becoming harder to pigeon-hole (and thus harder to
determine ahead of time whether they're the sort of game you'd like)
and it's more surprising when somebody /doesn't/ have a huge gaming
backlog.
Then you got things like HumbleChoice,Fanatical, and Amazon which
throw BUNDLES of games at you (some of which you want, some of which
you don't) and it becomes near impossible not to acquire games which
you'll never play.
In some ways, you have to almost pity the poor publisher, which not
only has to compete against other publishers, but put out a game that
will stand out against the dozens or hundreds your customers may
already have in their library. It used to be that gamers might only
have a handful of video games total; any new addition was certain to
be played. Now, the hardest part of my video-gaming hobby is not
BUYING the games but picking which of the thousands I own to play
next.
(Somehow I always manage to find a few, though, as evidenced by the
monthly 'what have you been playing' thread ;-)
Valve's gotta be lovin' it though. 30% of $19 billion is $5.7 billion
USD... and they barely gotta provide any bandwidth or support for
those games. Good money if you can manage it. ;-)
How much of that (alleged) $19 billion pie are you responsible for?
You've probably read -or at least heard mentioned- the news story that
Steam users have spent $19 billion USD on games they've never played.*
(If so, you've probably also heard some wag jokingly claim, "Yeah,
well, I'm probably responsible for $1 billion of that"**.) You may
even have heard counters to this estimate, calling it wildly
inaccurate (something I myself tend to agree with).
Still, regardless of the actual value, I think it is indisputable that
a lot of people have a lot of games they have never installed, much
less played. It's the nature of the industry now; there are just /SO/
many games available, and there's only so much time in the day to play
them. Add to that calculation that games are, on the whole, getting
longer and becoming harder to pigeon-hole (and thus harder to
determine ahead of time whether they're the sort of game you'd like)
and it's more surprising when somebody /doesn't/ have a huge gaming
backlog.
Then you got things like HumbleChoice,Fanatical, and Amazon which
throw BUNDLES of games at you (some of which you want, some of which
you don't) and it becomes near impossible not to acquire games which
you'll never play.
In some ways, you have to almost pity the poor publisher, which not
only has to compete against other publishers, but put out a game that
will stand out against the dozens or hundreds your customers may
already have in their library. It used to be that gamers might only
have a handful of video games total; any new addition was certain to
be played. Now, the hardest part of my video-gaming hobby is not
BUYING the games but picking which of the thousands I own to play
next.
(Somehow I always manage to find a few, though, as evidenced by the
monthly 'what have you been playing' thread ;-)
Valve's gotta be lovin' it though. 30% of $19 billion is $5.7 billion
USD... and they barely gotta provide any bandwidth or support for
those games. Good money if you can manage it. ;-)
How much of that (alleged) $19 billion pie are you responsible for?
--------------
* https://www.pcgamesn.com/steam/pile-of-shame
** Not me, though. I'm pretty sure I'm under $100 million USD ;-)
You've probably read -or at least heard mentioned- the news story that
Steam users have spent $19 billion USD on games they've never played.*
(If so, you've probably also heard some wag jokingly claim, "Yeah,
well, I'm probably responsible for $1 billion of that"**.) You may
even have heard counters to this estimate, calling it wildly
inaccurate (something I myself tend to agree with).
Still, regardless of the actual value, I think it is indisputable that
a lot of people have a lot of games they have never installed, much
less played. It's the nature of the industry now; there are just /SO/
many games available, and there's only so much time in the day to play
them. Add to that calculation that games are, on the whole, getting
longer and becoming harder to pigeon-hole (and thus harder to
determine ahead of time whether they're the sort of game you'd like)
and it's more surprising when somebody /doesn't/ have a huge gaming
backlog.
Then you got things like HumbleChoice,Fanatical, and Amazon which
throw BUNDLES of games at you (some of which you want, some of which
you don't) and it becomes near impossible not to acquire games which
you'll never play.
In some ways, you have to almost pity the poor publisher, which not
only has to compete against other publishers, but put out a game that
will stand out against the dozens or hundreds your customers may
already have in their library. It used to be that gamers might only
have a handful of video games total; any new addition was certain to
be played. Now, the hardest part of my video-gaming hobby is not
BUYING the games but picking which of the thousands I own to play
next.
(Somehow I always manage to find a few, though, as evidenced by the
monthly 'what have you been playing' thread ;-)
Valve's gotta be lovin' it though. 30% of $19 billion is $5.7 billion
USD... and they barely gotta provide any bandwidth or support for
those games. Good money if you can manage it. ;-)
How much of that (alleged) $19 billion pie are you responsible for?
You've probably read -or at least heard mentioned- the news story that
Steam users have spent $19 billion USD on games they've never played.*
(If so, you've probably also heard some wag jokingly claim, "Yeah,
well, I'm probably responsible for $1 billion of that"**.) You may
even have heard counters to this estimate, calling it wildly
inaccurate (something I myself tend to agree with).
Still, regardless of the actual value, I think it is indisputable that
a lot of people have a lot of games they have never installed, much
less played. It's the nature of the industry now; there are just /SO/
many games available, and there's only so much time in the day to play
them. Add to that calculation that games are, on the whole, getting
longer and becoming harder to pigeon-hole (and thus harder to
determine ahead of time whether they're the sort of game you'd like)
and it's more surprising when somebody /doesn't/ have a huge gaming
backlog.
Then you got things like HumbleChoice,Fanatical, and Amazon which
throw BUNDLES of games at you (some of which you want, some of which
you don't) and it becomes near impossible not to acquire games which
you'll never play.
In some ways, you have to almost pity the poor publisher, which not
only has to compete against other publishers, but put out a game that
will stand out against the dozens or hundreds your customers may
already have in their library. It used to be that gamers might only
have a handful of video games total; any new addition was certain to
be played. Now, the hardest part of my video-gaming hobby is not
BUYING the games but picking which of the thousands I own to play
next.
(Somehow I always manage to find a few, though, as evidenced by the
monthly 'what have you been playing' thread ;-)
Valve's gotta be lovin' it though. 30% of $19 billion is $5.7 billion
USD... and they barely gotta provide any bandwidth or support for
those games. Good money if you can manage it. ;-)
How much of that (alleged) $19 billion pie are you responsible for?
You've probably read -or at least heard mentioned- the news story that
Steam users have spent $19 billion USD on games they've never played.*
(If so, you've probably also heard some wag jokingly claim, "Yeah,
well, I'm probably responsible for $1 billion of that"**.) You may
even have heard counters to this estimate, calling it wildly
inaccurate (something I myself tend to agree with).
On Thu, 27 Jun 2024 12:39:18 -0400, Xocyll <Xocyll@gmx.com> wrote:
Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> looked up from reading the >>entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
say:
You've probably read -or at least heard mentioned- the news story that >>>Steam users have spent $19 billion USD on games they've never played.* >>>(If so, you've probably also heard some wag jokingly claim, "Yeah,
well, I'm probably responsible for $1 billion of that"**.) You may
even have heard counters to this estimate, calling it wildly
inaccurate (something I myself tend to agree with).
Hadn't but I doubt the number is anywhere near accurate.
Steam only counts playtime If and only IF you started the game through >>steam.
Star Trek Online for instance was sold as a game direct from the company >>first, then downloadable through arc (still is) and then through steam.
You can start it without steam knowing.
It says 146.2 hrs for a game I've played near daily for over a decade, >>because I only ever started it through steam if I was make a game
currency purchase.
The couple years of play of Fallout4, according to steam amounts to 11 >>minutes.
Path of Exile, another heavily played one, no time at all.
Warframe, haven't played it years but played it heavily for a while,
steam says 6 minutes.
So yeah, not trusting "Valve Math", since it apparently assumes no one
can live without steam or would start a game any other way.
And that's not even counting the value of the freebies that we
"purchased" for nothing - how are they being counted, as a zero value
sale, or regular price - betting it's regular price.
Many have pointed out the potential for inaccuracies in the survey.
So, the method used is as follows:
Apparently there is a website that keeps track of people's Steam
libraries, if they leave them open up to the public (about 10% of
people do). So, grab all the data from there to see what games people
own, and which ones have a playtime of 0.00 hours.
Take those games, multiply that by the *current* sale price, then
multiply that by 10 (because 10%, see above) to get $19 billion USD.
So yeah, it's a method potentially fraught with inaccuracies. Are the
10% who leave their libraries public representative of the whole?
[Possibly not.] Does this survey discriminate between games acquired
for free versus games actually purchased? [Unstated.] Do the current
prices in any way reflect the average price people paid for their
games? [Probably not]. Does it take into account games purchased
outside of the Steam ecosystem (e.g., via GreenGamers or Humble or >Fanatical)? [Unknown]. What about free upgrades or add-ins that happen >through Steam? [Not stated]. How accurate is Steam's Play Time
counter. [Not very, even if you take into account it didn't even EXIST
prior to 2009. Not only are there methods for bypassing Steam, Steam
itself seems to lose track or reset play-time over the years].
So that $19 billion USD needs to be taken with a /very/ large grain of
salt.
Nonetheless, regardless of the actual value, it is almost certain that
the average gamer has many games in their library that they haven't
ever played, and likely never will (I vaguely recall Valve or somebody >suggesting it was around 15 to 25% of the average library). And this
itself isn't really that surprising, given how /easy/ it is to acquire
games for free or extremely inexpensively. You don't even have to
worry about where to stash the box or CDs anymore! And since there is
so little friction to increasing the size of your average video-game
library, said libraries have ballooned in size.
Is it $19 billion worth of unplayed games? $1.9 billion? $99 billion?
I've no idea. Certainly I doubt such an unscientific survey as
PCGamesN used to answer that question. But it is an indicator of how
the industry has changed.
How much of that (alleged) $19 billion pie are you responsible for?
Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:
How much of that (alleged) $19 billion pie are you responsible for?
Well, according to PCGamesN's SteamIDFinder website, the same tool used to come up with that $19 billion number, I'm responsible for $3,666.90 of it.
Of course that number is totally bogus, just like the $19 billion one.
I haven't spent anywhere near $3600 on Steam games, let alone the
$6,480.61 the website values my entire Steam collection at. If had to
guess, I'd say I've spent somewhere in the region of $100 or $200 on
Steam games I haven't played yet.
However even if I were to try accurately caclulate amount of money I've
spent on games I've never played, how exactly I should do this is up
to debate. For games bought individually the price I had to pay for the
game is obvious, as it is for the games I got for free. However most of
the games I've bought individually I've played, so only a few of them
count towards what my "pile of shame" actually cost me. As for the
games I got for free, none of them count whether I've played them or not.
The problem is games I bought in bundles, which is a lot of my Steam collection and a lot of the games I haven't played. A lot of these
games I never had any intention of playing, and I conciously excluded
these games when determining whether the bundle was worth the price.
So in other words, if I bought a bundle of 10 games for $15 intending
only to play 3 of the games, should I value those 3 games as costing me $5 each, and the rest $0? Or should I value each of the 10 games at $1.50?
Then there's the question of what criteria to use to determine which
games I've played or not. Whether or not Steam records any time playing
the game is a simple way to do it, but a misleading one even ignoring any errors Valve may have made collecting this data. For example, there was
a period where I was playing games just to get the trading card drops.
I usually made an effort to actually play the game, but sometimes I
just got to main menu and alt-tabbed away. Even when I played the game
it was basically just as demo for the game, to see what it was like.
It wasn't a serious attempt to play the game.
So the I answer is I don't really know how much of that "pie" I'm actually repsonsible for, but I've certianly paid a lot less than what PCGamesN
claims my pile of shame is worth.
Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> looked up from reading the entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
say:
You've probably read -or at least heard mentioned- the news story that
Steam users have spent $19 billion USD on games they've never played.*
(If so, you've probably also heard some wag jokingly claim, "Yeah,
well, I'm probably responsible for $1 billion of that"**.) You may
even have heard counters to this estimate, calling it wildly
inaccurate (something I myself tend to agree with).
Hadn't but I doubt the number is anywhere near accurate.
Steam only counts playtime If and only IF you started the game through
steam.
Star Trek Online for instance was sold as a game direct from the company first, then downloadable through arc (still is) and then through steam.
You can start it without steam knowing.
It says 146.2 hrs for a game I've played near daily for over a decade, because I only ever started it through steam if I was make a game
currency purchase.
The couple years of play of Fallout4, according to steam amounts to 11 minutes.
Path of Exile, another heavily played one, no time at all.
Warframe, haven't played it years but played it heavily for a while,
steam says 6 minutes.
So yeah, not trusting "Valve Math", since it apparently assumes no one
can live without steam or would start a game any other way.
And that's not even counting the value of the freebies that we
"purchased" for nothing - how are they being counted, as a zero value
sale, or regular price - betting it's regular price.
Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:
How much of that (alleged) $19 billion pie are you responsible for?
Well, according to PCGamesN's SteamIDFinder website, the same tool used to come up with that $19 billion number, I'm responsible for $3,666.90 of it.
Of course that number is totally bogus, just like the $19 billion one.
I haven't spent anywhere near $3600 on Steam games, let alone the
$6,480.61 the website values my entire Steam collection at. If had to
guess, I'd say I've spent somewhere in the region of $100 or $200 on
Steam games I haven't played yet.
However even if I were to try accurately caclulate amount of money I've
spent on games I've never played, how exactly I should do this is up
to debate. For games bought individually the price I had to pay for the
game is obvious, as it is for the games I got for free. However most of
the games I've bought individually I've played, so only a few of them
count towards what my "pile of shame" actually cost me. As for the
games I got for free, none of them count whether I've played them or not.
The problem is games I bought in bundles, which is a lot of my Steam collection and a lot of the games I haven't played. A lot of these
games I never had any intention of playing, and I conciously excluded
these games when determining whether the bundle was worth the price.
So in other words, if I bought a bundle of 10 games for $15 intending
only to play 3 of the games, should I value those 3 games as costing me $5 each, and the rest $0? Or should I value each of the 10 games at $1.50?
Then there's the question of what criteria to use to determine which
games I've played or not. Whether or not Steam records any time playing
the game is a simple way to do it, but a misleading one even ignoring any errors Valve may have made collecting this data. For example, there was
a period where I was playing games just to get the trading card drops.
I usually made an effort to actually play the game, but sometimes I
just got to main menu and alt-tabbed away. Even when I played the game
it was basically just as demo for the game, to see what it was like.
It wasn't a serious attempt to play the game.
So the I answer is I don't really know how much of that "pie" I'm actually repsonsible for, but I've certianly paid a lot less than what PCGamesN
claims my pile of shame is worth.
On 6/27/2024 9:39 AM, Xocyll wrote:
Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
say:
You've probably read -or at least heard mentioned- the news story that
Steam users have spent $19 billion USD on games they've never played.*
(If so, you've probably also heard some wag jokingly claim, "Yeah,
well, I'm probably responsible for $1 billion of that"**.) You may
even have heard counters to this estimate, calling it wildly
inaccurate (something I myself tend to agree with).
Hadn't but I doubt the number is anywhere near accurate.
Steam only counts playtime If and only IF you started the game through
steam.
Star Trek Online for instance was sold as a game direct from the company
first, then downloadable through arc (still is) and then through steam.
You can start it without steam knowing.
It says 146.2 hrs for a game I've played near daily for over a decade,
because I only ever started it through steam if I was make a game
currency purchase.
The couple years of play of Fallout4, according to steam amounts to 11
minutes.
Path of Exile, another heavily played one, no time at all.
Warframe, haven't played it years but played it heavily for a while,
steam says 6 minutes.
So yeah, not trusting "Valve Math", since it apparently assumes no one
can live without steam or would start a game any other way.
And that's not even counting the value of the freebies that we
"purchased" for nothing - how are they being counted, as a zero value
sale, or regular price - betting it's regular price.
Oh yeah, I've definitely got some I haven't played according to Steam
but most definitely did.
I've got a lot of the opposite too, where I just left a game running
even overnight because it was a pain to exit and/or start it and didn't become unstable. Or in the case of the DS series my hours are probably wildly exaggerated as I often think I closed it, but that just returned
it to the title screen, as you can't just exit game (well Alt-F4 works
but has some likelihood of not saving your progress)
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