$19 billion on unplayed games

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?





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* https://www.pcgamesn.com/steam/pile-of-shame
** Not me, though. I'm pretty sure I'm under $100 million USD ;-)