Re: $19 billion on unplayed games

On 6/28/2024 8:27 AM, Ross Ridge wrote:

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.

Huh, didn't know about that website.  I had my game info for friends only and had to open it to public to use that, which was probably a mistake.
Anyway my "pile of shame" is
$1,179.22
You can click on the pile of shame and see what it's counting.
My first ones:
* $40 Battlestar Galactica Deadlock.  (got that one for free, thanks rms for posting the giveaway)
* $40 Warhammer Gladius (also free, thanks again rms)
* $30 Dragon Age Origins "Ultimate Edition" $30 (I may have bought this for $4 based on sale I saw posted here, I occasionally think of playing it, but I played the original edition already and probably just wanted a steam edition with the DLCs in case the mood struck me.)
* $30 Total War: SHOGUN 2 (free, thanks Geoff)
* $30 Wasteland 2: Director's Cut (pretty sure this came with the normal game or was given away later to owners of it, I just never played the Director's cut, Doesn't count.)
* $30 Field of Glory (free, thanks rms)
* $30 Endless Legend (I may have bought this? I don't remember doing so, but certainly not at $30, I found some email notifications when it was $7.50 so it's possible I bought it for that, but it seems steep for what it was.  I do see a lot of chatter about it here, so maybe I was convinced at some point.)
* $30 Borderlands GotYE (I played GotY but not GotYE, I assume it's similar to WL2:DC and got given away to those who owned it or came in the same bundle, I certainty didn't buy it separately.)
So I have $260 so far going down the list of which only $11.50 are *possibly* legit, less than 5%  So if the same pattern follows (highly unlikely) I may have around $200 worth of games I actually paid for but didn't play.
Looking further down the list I see some Lego games, which either were played on my son's account, or he had no interest in when I got them.
A large number of Star Wars games (I bought a huge bundle at some point) which may actually have some minuscule value as part of that bundle, but never planned to play most of them. If I had to slice up the bundle equally per game it probably would amount to $70, but I don't think that's fair. I'd guess at $10 worth of SW games for weighted value I haven't gotten around to.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.  which I planned to play again, and owned but my CD got broken so I bought it again on the cheap.  Do I count that as actually played? No, I think not.
And a lot more giveaways.
So maybe $25-$50 real value out of $1000.  At most 0.5% of their stated value.  If we go by that, there may actually be $50 million of payed for but unplayed games out there.

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.

--
-Justisaur
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