36% of Steam Games Have Never Been Played

[ParadiseLost]

Nearly 37% Of All Registered Steam Games Have Never Been Played

More than a third of the games on Steam have never been played.

www.forbes.com

Initially, I found this a little hard to believe.

However, I recently went back and took a look at my backlog - which I have been trying to diminish in scale - to check and see how much of a dent in it I could make if I focused on playing short games.

The calculations shocked me.

I went and collected a list of 167 of the shortest games in my library. In total, completing of them would take 606.5 hours. Considering I average 20 hours a week, it would take me 30 weeks... to finish 15% of the shortest games in my backlog.
I don't even want to imagine what it would take to finish the 15% longest games.

In light of this, its much less surprising that 36% of all Steam games have never been played, and many more never finished.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I've always been puzzled by this. On Youtube and on other forums, I always hear people talk about "mustering up the will to fight through their backlog", as well as see people post the dozens and dozens of games they bought during a steam sale, and yet they're grown adults with jobs so there is no way they're going to have the time to play through all of those games. Why are they spending money on stuff they're never going to enjoy? Sounds like people have poor discipline/impulse control. Or maybe they're easily duped by psychological marketing tricks? Or maybe people don't know what they like and just buy whatever? Or maybe it's a vanity thing, like how people like to show off their bookshelves lined with hundreds of books, video games, plastic figurines, etc?

I rarely buy games anymore. Most games don't fit my taste, and it is rare when one comes out that does. If I do buy a game, I'm pretty much guaranteed to play it. I like gaming, but my life doesn't revolve around it, and if there is nothing that interests me at the moment, I'll just do something else like read a book. I'm not so desperate to buy tons of games just because I need to have games.

 

[ParadiseLost]

For me personally, its partly because I'm a collector, and steam games are my equivalent of Baseball cards or coins or whatever.

Its also because I really like video games in general, and will choose playing a video game over TV 99.9% of the time, and over books 90% of the time.

I have collections in Steam dedicated to games I played a little and just had 0 interest in and uninstalled fairly quickly. I've learned not to spend too much time playing a game I don't like, so I move on to other games.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Hmm, well I'm mainly a reader and reach for games significantly behind that. That said I'm not really that surprised. Once upon a time I was highly active in the webcomic community and it was fairly apparent to me that while the big names like Penny Arcade, Schlock Mercenary, and Sluggy Freelance drew in millions of viewers a surprisingly large percentage of webcomics had maybe five total readers if that.

So I can't be that amazed that it's the same for games. Granted 36% is more than I would have guessed offhand but, honestly, I have a couple hundred free games from the Epic Store's weekly offers at this point*. I haven't played but maybe a quarter of them and half of those I uninstalled ten minutes after starting them. Why would the rest of the world be dramatically different?

*While on the subject, why in the absolute #$!@# does the Epic Store require a video card to run? That's insanity, it can't possibly require it just to download games. The individual games, yes, depending on which one, but the installer should not need a video card.

 

[ParadiseLost]

*While on the subject, why in the absolute #$!@# does the Epic Store require a video card to run? That's insanity, it can't possibly require it just to download games. The individual games, yes, depending on which one, but the installer should not need a video card.

Something sounds very wrong with your video-card less experiences.

Fortnite is intentionally designed to be able to run without a video card altogether, even on relatively old hardware, so your experiences sound very weird.

By any chance, are you using the same PC where the video card broke?

 

[Bear Ribs]

Something sounds very wrong with your video-card less experiences.

Fortnite is intentionally designed to be able to run without a video card altogether, even on relatively old hardware, so your experiences sound very weird.

By any chance, are you using the same PC where the video card broke?

Yes, though I told it the video card wasn't there anymore since I was getting the Black Screen of Death on boot anyway.

I'll admit I'm not a particularly sophisticated computer user. I tried half a dozen or so solutions on YouTube that didn't work to get it running again but I'm not savvy enough to figure it out on my own for sure. That said, there are lots and lots of people who have stated the Epic Store requires a video card to run for what I presume are remarkably stupid reasons given its actual graphic requirements (showing a menu, processing transactions, downloading files, and playing videos) should be more in line with something published for windows 95 25 years ago.

It's highly irritating given I had better functionality 30 years ago on CompuServe.

 

[ParadiseLost]

Yes, though I told it the video card wasn't there anymore since I was getting the Black Screen of Death on boot anyway.

I'll admit I'm not a particularly sophisticated computer user. I tried half a dozen or so solutions on YouTube that didn't work to get it running again but I'm not savvy enough to figure it out on my own for sure. That said, there are lots and lots of people who have stated the Epic Store requires a video card to run for what I presume are remarkably stupid reasons given its actual graphic requirements (showing a menu, processing transactions, downloading files, and playing videos) should be more in line with something published for windows 95 25 years ago.

It's highly irritating given I had better functionality 30 years ago on CompuServe.

I mean, I'm running Epic Games right now on an old laptop with no graphics card that I use. It definitely works without a graphics card.

Do you have the GeForce Control Panel?

 

[Bear Ribs]

I had an NVidia card.

It's kinda a known flaw and many people have worked on Epic's inexplicable desire for a Video card to display basic text and movies. I've investigated pretty thoroughly. It's just that every solution seems to rely on a specific combination of hardware and updates I don't have and it doesn't seem worth investing a thousand hours in finding the right one for me, especially since I'm still running ancient Windows 7 so there's no more patches and updates for me. I'll upgrade eventually but for now, there's DosBox.

Epic Games Launcher: Unsupported Graphics Card error (Windows 7) - Epic Games Store Support

If you are running Windows 7 and receiving an Unsupported Graphics Card error when using the Epic Games Launcher, your problem can usually

www.epicgames.com

 

[ParadiseLost]

@Bear Ribs

Open Nvidia Control Panel.

Go to Program Settings.

Under "1. Select a program to customize:" select Epic Games.

Then go to the "2. Select the preferred graphics card processor for this program:" Open and select Integrated Graphics.

Then hit the Apply button that appears at the bottom.

I will be surprised if that doesn't work.

 

[PsihoKekec]

Only 37%? I always thought it's more like 60%.

 

[VicSage]

Why are they spending money on stuff they're never going to enjoy? Sounds like people have poor discipline/impulse control. Or maybe they're easily duped by psychological marketing tricks? Or maybe people don't know what they like and just buy whatever? Or maybe it's a vanity thing, like how people like to show off their bookshelves lined with hundreds of books, video games, plastic figurines, etc?

While I can't speak for everyone, in my case a lot of it was humble bundles where I was only interested in one or two of the games, and being able to buy those games for $12 was a good 80% discount combined. The others were ones that looked mildly interesting that came with the bundle, and I just hadn't gotten to them yet in favor of my Stellaris/DQB2 addiction (and it is a major annoyance that you can't figure out if the mods are working properly until you reach the mid to late game, at which point you can't fix the issue). As for the rest, I haven't redeemed the keys yet, I figure I can either trade them or give away the keys to anyone who wants the games.

 

[Bear Ribs]

@Bear Ribs

Open Nvidia Control Panel.

Won't run without a video card.

 

[Robovski]

I have certainly bought some bundles in my time, those account for most of the games I have never played in my library.

 

[Battlegrinder]

Why are they spending money on stuff they're never going to enjoy? Sounds like people have poor discipline/impulse control. Or maybe they're easily duped by psychological marketing tricks? Or maybe people don't know what they like and just buy whatever? Or maybe it's a vanity thing, like how people like to show off their bookshelves lined with hundreds of books, video games, plastic figurines, etc?

You can apply this to literally anything. How many people have tools they've never used, films they've never watched, clothes they've never worn, etc lying around the house? People buy things they know they want without a concrete plan on what they want to do with it all the time.

If I buy a game I'll probably like for ten bucks but never get around to it....oh no? I'm out ten bucks, the horror. I have a set budget for personal entertainment, that money's already allocated and doesn't impact my financial health no matter what I spend it on.

 

[edgeworthy]

It doesn't help that Windows 10 can be somewhat un-reliable when running Steam.

 

[ParadiseLost]

It doesn't help that Windows 10 can be somewhat un-reliable when running Steam.

I doubt that's even a percent of a percent of it.