Steam users have reportedly spent $19,000,000,000 on games they’ve never even played
The Steam sale is as dangerous as ever
We've all got a backlog to battle, but information has revealed that Steam users have reportedly spent over $19,000,000,000 games they've never even played.
PC gamers are well renowned for building massive game libraries, and anyone with a Steam account has plenty of games they've bought in sales gone by and haven't quite got around to yet, but it's staggering how many untouched purchases there really are.
From big bundles to games that end up costing mere cents, it's hard to resist a good deal even if it ends up clogging up your digital library.
As reported by PCGamesN, who have used SteamID Finder, it is estimated that user's of Valve's storefront have racked up $19 billion worth of games that haven't even been played for a minute.
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This works on the information that around 10% of Steam profiles are accessible by SteamID Finder, and $1.9 billion of unplayed games have been purchased by those accounts.
If you go on the assumption that all games are $60 - which they very much aren't, especially during the famous Steam sales when games often cut their price in half or more, that would make for 316,666,666 games that haven't seen the light of a monitor screen.
The likely reason for this staggering amount is the aforementioned sales that occur at least four times a year. Many users wait exclusively for these sales to purchase new games, and the prices are often incredibly difficult to resist.
You'll often find yourself buying games simply because the prices are too good not to, resigning yourself to 'getting round to that eventually' despite having hundreds of games in your library under the same conditions.
Steam also displays your library's game count as almost a badge of honor, prompting many to purchase new games for miniscule prices simply to get these numbers as high as possible.
This is very much a collective experience for PC gamers though, and the mass-hysteria has been shared by many on sites like Reddit.
A post on the r/Steam subreddit has many supportive comments, with one user remarking that the number "sounds about right," whereas another points out: "yea, but they were on sale."
One even points out the path that so many of us tend to fall into:
"1. I'm going to play it, 2. Just after I play this game where I already played for 800 hours, 3. Okay, I am going to try and play it, 4. Oh cool, Steam sale... 5. Repeat 1)."
It's a never ending cycle that we can all get swept up into, and it's unlikely that it'll change any time soon. We'll get round to that one game eventually though, just after we've finished the other 400...