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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

#81

Post by nlawalker »

bluescrn wrote: post #56
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?

Physical books (and games) sit there on a shelf and you're occasionally remind you that you bought them and maybe should read/play them. Items in a digital library seem much easier to completely and utterly forget about.

True, but on the flip side, items in a digital library generally don't have to be paid for and put there until you're about to use them for the first time, making it a little stranger that they never even get booted up.

Everyone's different, but at least for me, I don't buy a game with the hope I'll find time to play it sometime in the next month, I buy it when I'm ready to start playing it, like right now.

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

#83

Post by mhlakhani »

This was me for a long time and it got even worse especially with Humble Bundles — I often ended up buying games on say PS5 though I had them on steam.

Ended up building a side project for myself which would yell at me for trying to buy something I already had.

But that’s ok, sometimes the collection is half the fun

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

#84

Post by b3lvedere »

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.

I uses to collect almost everything, now having over 2000 games. Now i select them for Steam Deck playability. I still hoard a lot, but i also try to at least start them once and play a little before moving on to the next one :)

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

#86

Post by nightski »

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."

That's just because we aren't retired yet. :)

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

#87

Post by eddd-ddde »

nightski wrote: post #86
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."

That's just because we aren't retired yet. :)

My steam library is just an extension of my retirement portfolio. Diversification if you will.

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

#88

Post by mystifyingpoi »

whynotmaybe wrote: post #12

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

It is "gear acquisition syndrome". It refers to all guitar related equipment, actually I'd say that it refers to pedals much more than guitars.

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

#89

Post by SirHumphrey »

levocardia wrote: post #61
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?

For games like Factorio and Minecraft sales work a bit differently. These games are evergreen and very easily and commonly pirated, so people who are buying already have tens or hundreds of hours in the game. The marketing and capturing price sensitive markets through sales makes less sense - you are only losing margin to people who would buy regardless.

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

#90

Post by izacus »

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.

The other thing is abuse of percentages. "Only 5% of US population has ever finished a video game." (which is a staggering 16 million people). This type of thing.

Instead of focusing on folks who actually do invest time into your product, even if the % is low.

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