Re: $19 billion on unplayed games

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:
>

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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).

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Hadn't but I doubt the number is anywhere near accurate.
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Steam only counts playtime If and only IF you started the game through
steam.
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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.
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You can start it without steam knowing.
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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.
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The couple years of play of Fallout4, according to steam amounts to 11
minutes.
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Path of Exile, another heavily played one, no time at all.
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Warframe, haven't played it years but played it heavily for a while,
steam says 6 minutes.
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So yeah, not trusting "Valve Math", since it apparently assumes no one
can live without steam or would start a game any other way.
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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.