• FenrirIII@lemmy.world
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    22 hours ago

    The problem is that you pay $20-30 for a game that ends up sucking when you finally get to play it 2 months later which is past Steam’s refund date. If you never play it, it may still be a fun game and not a bad decision. Schrodinger’s game.

    • collapse_already@lemmy.ml
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      2 days ago

      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.)

  • lordnikon@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    alternative headline “steam users have a ton of games they got from a humble bundle for super cheap and we didn’t take that into account and used the msrp value of each game for this shocking headline.”

    Also some games don’t count time on older games. i know I have games like half life 2 episode 1 that i have beaten that show I never played them since I played them before they started tracking time.

    • Lets_Eat_Grandma@lemm.ee
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      3 days ago

      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.

      • lordnikon@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        agreed but barely touch is not the same as never touch that’s why I think they are looking at play time as some kind of real metic where it’s been broken from the beginning. You make a really good point as well about offline can also impact that as well.

  • blady_blah@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Yeah, guilty as charged and I don’t even mind.

    I buy the games on sale if I play them then good for me, if I don’t then I supported developers. I see no problem here.

  • kindenough@kbin.earth
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    3 days ago

    I have a large collection of unplayed games, and most of them came from Humble Bundle.

    • chamaeleon@fedia.io
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      3 days ago

      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…

    • PsychedSy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 days ago

      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.

  • callouscomic@lemm.ee
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    3 days ago

    This is bullshit analysis. People can buy their steam keys from endless sources and sales. Some games that would have been $20+ some people can get for as little as $0.50 depending on circumstances.

    It’d be impossible to calculate how much has been spent. They also just straight multiplied the amount of public ones instead of better estimating that using data they had.

    All you can do is say how much they are currently or were worth. Considering how steep the price drops can be for many games, it’s a pretty wide range of possibilities and makes estimating this fairly worthless.

    Just a deliberately bullshit headline made by idiots wielding “data science” hype.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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      3 days ago

      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.

  • Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works
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    3 days ago

    Haha whaaattt… Nobody actually does that…haha, that would be like, just kinda silly right…

    glances nervously at Steam library

    • CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml
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      2 days ago

      I think the summer sale starts tomorrow, definitely gonna add a few more to the old backlog lol

    • RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works
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      3 days ago

      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.

      • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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        2 days ago

        Also depending on how theyre counted some games have beta servers and shit listed separately also mod kits and the like can be included in this.