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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

#61

Post by levocardia »

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…

Seems like basic price discrimination. Occasional sales let you capture some of the people for whom your game (or the option to play your game, maybe never exercised...) is worth $10 instead of $20 (or whatever). I don't really see who is harmed here, other than players who say "well maybe the game will go on sale..." -- but did they really value the game at its sticker price to begin with?

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

#62

Post by HPsquared »

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…

Time is the biggest cost of gaming.

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

#63

Post by sfn42 »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #42
tylervigen wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You should play RDR2, it's absolutely phenomenal. That and Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 are the best role playing games I've played in the past decade.

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

#64

Post by mey »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #42
tylervigen wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ditto. I have several games in my backlog that I got on deep discount, but need serious time commitment to play. It's going to take me a little bit to play Witcher 3, Disco Elysium, or the entire Mass Effect trilogy. Also there is a certain time horizon on steam that play time wasn't tracked. I am pretty sure I played Half Life 2, since that's why I have a steam account in the first place.

Edit: You may not want to know if your steam account is old enough to drink...

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

#65

Post by HPsquared »

pembrook wrote: post #48

This is true for all products. How much of your closet is filled with stuff you haven’t worn in at least a year. How much of your freezer is full of stuff you’ll never eat. How many of the books on your bookshelf will you actually read before you die?

eBooks and audiobooks are even worse than paper books in that regard. Environmentally much better though!

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

#66

Post by bmacho »

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…

+1 complain for the editoralized title. It's so much worse than the original.

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

#67

Post by egypturnash »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #42
tylervigen wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bundles contribute a lot too. Hey you can get these three games for dirt cheap because you own another game in this bundle! One of them’s interesting to you, maybe even already on your wishlist, the others are not, and the bundle is less than the full price of the one you think might be neat. The others just sink to the bottom of your collection, uninstalled, unplayed, unloved.

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

#68

Post by [deleted] »

999900000999 wrote: post #53
whynotmaybe wrote: post #12

https://www.guitarworld.com/features/gear-acquisition-syndro... First from "guitar acquisition syndrome" can now become "game acquisition syndrome"

Very different. With a physical item you can always sell it or give it away. Instruments in particular can hold value extremely well. Also, just having the guitar as a decoration can look nice. There's a reason most guitar manufacturers put a lot of effort into aesthetics.

[deleted]

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

#69

Post by bhaney »

throw101010 wrote: post #57
bhaney wrote: post #10

Nearly all of my "unplayed" Steam games have been played plenty by me, just not through Steam. Sometimes I think about how my Steam account contributes to statistics that are used to drive narratives like this where "not time-tracked by Steam" = "unplayed game bought by an insane collector." But chances are that narrative is overwhelmingly right most of the time, so whatever.

Just to clarify, I have the same usage and it's because I "pirate" games and only buy the ones that I play more than once/couple hours. I don't trust and nor like the refund policies/processes and all kinds of fences they implement, and often even after I have bought a game I will keep using the pirated version because it is more convenient (offline play, no need to login and it's already installed... when games are…

> Do you have another kind of usage that leads to these false positive?

No, pretty much same usage. I buy games to support the devs after I've already pirated the game and determined it's good, then I go back to playing the pirated copy.

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

#70

Post by bee_rider »

throw101010 wrote: post #57
bhaney wrote: post #10

Nearly all of my "unplayed" Steam games have been played plenty by me, just not through Steam. Sometimes I think about how my Steam account contributes to statistics that are used to drive narratives like this where "not time-tracked by Steam" = "unplayed game bought by an insane collector." But chances are that narrative is overwhelmingly right most of the time, so whatever.

Just to clarify, I have the same usage and it's because I "pirate" games and only buy the ones that I play more than once/couple hours. I don't trust and nor like the refund policies/processes and all kinds of fences they implement, and often even after I have bought a game I will keep using the pirated version because it is more convenient (offline play, no need to login and it's already installed... when games are…

Steam’s return policy is pretty generous. But I can see not wanting to deal with it anyway.
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