Most people who buy games on Steam never play them

- buying games you played pirated before (now that you can afford them), but you already played them so no need to play again

- buying games you played at someone else place, lend to you etc. Again you already played them but want to give back to the authors.

- buying games you will play later, and once you play them you have new games which you will played later -- leading to some constant amount of unplayed games (and some you end up never playing 'cause time)

- early access titles you already bought but will most likely only play on release

- buying very story driven games (mainly short indi games) where through watching someone else play you already now (and enjoyed) all the story but want to give bac to the authors anyway ("someone else" could be twitch, or you room mate, doesn't matter)

I have a few of this cases in my Steam library.

E.g. Little Misfortune for the last case or Hades 2 for the early access part or Dave the Diver for the I will definitely still play it part (very soon TM, jokes aside probably starting Wednesday).

Also one point I didn't include as it's kinda hording: Game bundles where you want all games but one, think the last game is still nice but anyway will never play it as there are too many other even better games.

Ironically I bought it and never played it. I only bought it because I played a clone of the game called "Dyson's Sphere" made by a Chinese developer and wondered what the original game was like.

> The developer profits from the players FOMO when a sale happens.

No, That isn't it at all.

This is like super backwards. FOMO happens typically when a big game is released. No months/years afterwards.

A lot of players are waiting for a game to be the right price. Triple-A titles are now £60+. Doom the Dark Ages was over £70 at launch that is without the extra micro-transaction nonsense. Some games (even indie games) come out at £25-30. I am a big Doom fan and play megawads such as Eviternity and I said to myself "No I am not paying that much" for the new Doom game. I have plenty of disposable income.

If the game comes down to less than £15 that is 3-4 overpriced coffee / 3-4 pints of beer down the bar.

If you are patient you know that the game is going to go on sale some time in the future so you wait until their is a sale. Steam even have mid-week deals. I hear/see these conversations all the time on Discord, in person, reddit etc.

> The player thinks he has accumulated a glorious Steam library when in reality he just wasted tons of money on games he wouldn’t even ever launch.

I've never heard anyone flex their Steam Library. I don't think anyone thinks of it this way. Achievements in a particular game, sure.

Of games I have specifically paid money for, I believe I have played 100% of them.

It's probably the wrong interpretation to say a lot of people are making the decision to buy an individual game and then not playing it. Although I know people who do that, even with physical boardgames, they usually have the intention to play but life gets in the way.

That's a completely different scenario to myself where they just accumulate without me noticing. A number of times I have read a retrospective of a game and wondered if I owned a copy already. I usually get around a 50% hit rate on those.