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Most people who buy games on Steam never play them

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Re: Most people who buy games on Steam never play them

#41

Post by tbrownaw »

My library has quite a few games I haven't played, but most are from bundles that cost as much as or slightly less than the other bundle parts I actually did want. A couple are from friends posting keys from bundles, and then I got sidetracked by something before seeing if whatever game was actually as interesting as it sounded.

The only one I actually properly paid for and haven't played is Elden Ring. Because I got sidetracked for too long between buying it and finding out it wanted admin access (for some anti-cheat rootkit) to play at all rather than just to enable competitive online things I wasn't interested in. Which I didn't feel like doing on a machine that also had non-game stuff on it.

Re: Most people who buy games on Steam never play them

#42

Post by ASalazarMX »

tylervigen wrote: post #31
mort96 wrote: post #14

The title is a misreading of the data. It's not that "most people who buy games on Steam never play them". It's that most games people buy remain unplayed. A tiny, tiny minority of people who buy games of Steam never play games they buy on Steam. EDIT: Apparently, this error was introduced by the HN submission! The title of the article on the website is: "Most people who buy your game won’t play it". This matches the…

One stat in here supports a third, slightly different statement. The median player has not played 51% of their games, so: "most people who buy games on steam have not played most of the games they own."

Correlates with my experience. Sometimes sales are so attractive you buy several games for cheap, or even an entire franchise, but playing them all can take enough time that another sale comes again. Red Dead Redemption 2 has been collecting digital dust in my library because I'm still playing Fallout 76. I stopped buying more because it feels wrong.

Re: Most people who buy games on Steam never play them

#44

Post by oefrha »

marcyb5st wrote: post #4

Personally, I have a ton of unplayed games because of Humble Bundle. Like I would buy the bundle for 1 game, and the other 9 came with it. For some of them I would redeem the coupon just in case.

Same. My library is probably >70% unplayed because of that, but in terms of money spent I’d say the number becomes <10%. And in general people are more likely to impulse buy on discount, especially deep discount. So I won’t count on making most of the revenue from unplayed sales (plus the provided stat is average 32.7% unplayed, median 51.7% unplayed, that’s not “most” anyway).

Re: Most people who buy games on Steam never play them

#45

Post by bombcar »

whoisyc wrote: post #32

I wish more game developers adopt the “no sales, period” policy of Factorio. Here’s a relevant quote from the developer. > Not having a sale ever is part of our philosophy. In short term, they are good and bring extra money, but we are targeting long term. I believe that searching for sales is wasted time, and people should decide on the price and value, but putting option of wasting time to search for deals or waiti…

The real reason cracktorio can do no sale is the same reason Minecrack can be basically no sale (same price forever) - it’s an evergreen game people will always buy at a low roar.

Most games are like DVDs or books, they frontload 90% of their total revenue in the first few months, and so sales are a way to squeeze a bit more juice out later.

Re: Most people who buy games on Steam never play them

#46

Post by fileeditview »

whoisyc wrote: post #32

I wish more game developers adopt the “no sales, period” policy of Factorio. Here’s a relevant quote from the developer. > Not having a sale ever is part of our philosophy. In short term, they are good and bring extra money, but we are targeting long term. I believe that searching for sales is wasted time, and people should decide on the price and value, but putting option of wasting time to search for deals or waiti…

I don't know.. maybe if you cannot control your impulses..

For me Steam sales are great. I have things in the wish list and when the sale is good I might buy it. I always check if it's a good sale on SteamDB.

I usually play these games but most of the time not for long. That's why I don't want to put in the full price.

Re: Most people who buy games on Steam never play them

#47

Post by AznHisoka »

deelowe wrote: post #18
mort96 wrote: post #14

The title is a misreading of the data. It's not that "most people who buy games on Steam never play them". It's that most games people buy remain unplayed. A tiny, tiny minority of people who buy games of Steam never play games they buy on Steam. EDIT: Apparently, this error was introduced by the HN submission! The title of the article on the website is: "Most people who buy your game won’t play it". This matches the…

I don't know why but I find language like this incredibly frustrating. Maybe it's because the media tends to do this sort of thing all the time to fit statistics to their narrative.

I think because the “true” statement is more awkward as a headline, and requires more seconds to parse. Thus they need to dumb it down.

The real headline would be “Most games people buy are never played” or something. Which can mean a lot of things like do people often buy games that nobody else has ever played?

Re: Most people who buy games on Steam never play them

#50

Post by mort96 »

cAtte_ wrote: post #28
mort96 wrote: post #14

The title is a misreading of the data. It's not that "most people who buy games on Steam never play them". It's that most games people buy remain unplayed. A tiny, tiny minority of people who buy games of Steam never play games they buy on Steam. EDIT: Apparently, this error was introduced by the HN submission! The title of the article on the website is: "Most people who buy your game won’t play it". This matches the…

the original title is "Most people who buy your game won’t play it", which is actually equivalent to what you're saying (even though it still says 'most people'!). HN mods edit titles to avoid clickbait and the like, which can end up like this

Oh you're right! The title of the article on the website matches the data presented by the article. I didn't notice that it was different.

Pretty bad of HN to edit a good title into a dishonest one like this.

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