I’m at least $200 of this statistic, now do the people who played for less than ten hours. I’d be like $1,000.

I’ve had games not record time because I was in offline mode on vacation and I pre-downloaded it, or I just played in offline mode or directly from a game’s executable without steam’s crap embedded.

In the past it’s been trivial to set achievement unlocks and time played with 3rd party tools too.

I don’t see any kind of discounts mentioned either. I almost never buy from steam directly, usually reputable 3rd party sites like Fanatical, GamersGate, WinGameStore etc that I find through isthereanydeal. It’ll show as being on my account but nobody knows what I paid for it and I almost never pay MSRP.

Then there’s the countless bundle keys I used to get that I definitely never played and will never play because I wanted 2-3 games in a bundle of 10-20 that was cheaper than one of the games alone.

It wouldn’t shock me at all if there was 10 billion worth of unplayed games though. I have friends that buy all the hot releases and then barely touch them because a couple hundred bucks a month is not significant to their monthly budget.

This is true for me as well. I’m going to guess 95% or more of my steam games come from bundles. I have only bought a few games on steam itself. Similar situation with GOG, where a large majority of my games have been bought on 80-95% off sales. Just in case the itch strikes…

I used to buy games that devs talked about on reddit’s game dev subs. No intent to play them. I’d just pick 'em up to help the dev if I liked them or their style.

Same, but also add Fanatical and game giveaways.

Don’t look at my Epic collection. Between it and Steam have a few thousand dollars in games. (If you’re counting retail prices)

I played a bunch of older games i got cheap on steam deck and i’ll do the same when the deckard will come out. 10/10 games that are 10+ years old are great to play on the go!

Yes individually. XD

Exactly. I almost never pay full price on Steam, and I add a lot of keys from Humble or Fanatical bundles where I only intend to play half or so.

So yeah, I’m guessing it’s actually 10% or so of that figure if we make a few rules:

• count bundles as a single game, and if one game is played from it, that counts for the whole bundle
• assume games added to Steam are part of a bundle (perhaps in groups of 5)
• don’t count games that were ever given away free
• assume all games were purchased at a discount

That would probably get us pretty close to the real number.

Saving them for my retirement. (I will probably only retire when my health is so poor that it is clear that I won’t outlive my retirement resources.)

Steam just had a 90% off sale from an entire publisher. Right now, looking at the stores front page there is
86% off a call of the wild
70% off hell pie.
90% off dragon age.
85% off a worms game.
75% off blasphemous.
90% off another dragon age game.
80% off kingdom Come.
75% off riders Republic.
90% off team17 games.

You’re yelling at clouds, old man.

There are a few games that you might miss out on with this method. Some devs (it’s not many) list their games at what they think is a fair forever price and will not ever offer the game at a reduced price. Again, this isn’t a lot of devs, but one notable one is Wube, makers of Factorio.

I generally agree with your method, mostly because I have a large enough backlog to be able to wait for sales, but it is also worth doing research on some devs to see if a sale will ever happen.

The key thing indeed is to only buy what you need right now. This philosophy is also very helpful in other areas of lives to avoid wasting money on discounts (elg buying clothes you’ll never wear).

I’d rather pay full price for a game I start laying immediately, than to put something 90% off in my backlg, with no guarante I’ll ever play it.

… I’ll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror

Just want to add, not only is it a ridiculous number because of sales, there’s also free games that wreck the numbers.

Glancing at my unplayed library, sure there’s a bunch of leftovers from Humble Bundles I got ages ago for what amounted to a fraction of retail, but there’s also things like BioShock 1&2 Remastered - games that were given out FOR FREE to owners of the original. I’ve PLAYED the originals, but I assume the powers that be would tell you I have $60 worth of unplayed games sitting there since I haven’t opened the remasters.

This is it. I have a ton from humble bundle and free keys. Very few I’ve paid for and never played.