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 data presented by the article.
The article glosses over what I'd have to believe is the biggest reason - some games, in particular older AAA games, are discounted so aggressively that it seems silly to not purchase. Like 5-15% of the original retail price.
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."
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’m in this category. I have two tiers of games on my wishlist. Those that if they are less than $20 I would buy and those that if they are less than $3 I would buy.
It’s not automatic, sometimes I just don’t feel like buying a game anymore even when it’s on sale, and I’ll drop them when if they go on sale and I don’t want them enough to pay.
But I do end up with a few games in my library I haven’t played yet.
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
I won't say it's not hording, but there are also some other reasons you can't well untangle from hording:
- 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.
I've got games that I intend to play later, and they were cheap enough that I don't think I'll save any more by waiting. I do intend to play Mad Max at some point - $5 was too much for me to add it to my library. $2.50? Fine... pulled the trigger with 9 other items I plan to do. The thing with steam is once you have them in your library, they remain. Some items are not sold anymore, however.
Looking at my queue over 20 years... likely hording. Nuts. One of the gotchas I bumped into was I really need a larger disk for games. Some of the newer stuff takes an enormous amount of space, which means it waits and waits.
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 waiting seems like bad part of the equation.
I get why people put games on sale. It gets you on a list on steam and gets people to talk about you on Reddit and gets emails sent to everyone who’s wishlisted your game. It boosts your profits and I get it.
But let’s be honest, these techniques benefit the developer not the player. The developer profits from the players FOMO when a sale happens. 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.
If any thing the domain of this website already tells you everything you need to know. It’s all about marketing, aka moving money from your pocket into theirs with psychological maneuvers.
Putting a product on sale is amoral because somebody might buy something they don't need, is weirdest take I have seen in a while. We're not all just whales, some people don't have that much money. Plenty of teenagers, unemployed, etc. are able to get some good experiences because of good sales.
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.
The reason factorio devs can take such a stance is that they crowd financed the game over a decade ago when doing that was viable, and since then the game has achieved cult status. Sure the game was officially released in 2020, but it had been in Early Access since 2016.
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.
> these techniques benefit the developer not the player
Hard disagree. Buying games on sales is a magnificent way I can expand my horizons and play random games I'd have never heard of otherwise or would've never tried.
I waited for Elden Ring to be on sale because I wasn't sure if I will like it, and 2 hours is not enough to try a game like this. No other reason.
Lot's of people buy on sale because it's too expensive for them otherwise. Factorios sales model does mean lost sales, they have just decided that it is okay for them. Game is DRM free, can be pirated with no problems if you can't afford it.
The point of sales is that you sell the game to people who think the game is worth full price at full price and those who have less money or think the game is worth less to them at the price they would rather pay.
It's basically a reverse auction process, where the bids start high and get lower over time.
The KSP1 DLC is basically never worth it at full price to me.
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?
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.
That and sales, especially the old ones with dailies, you'd see a game at 90% off and you'd go "uh that looks fine I can swing $2 for it" but might never actually get around to playing it.
I am in the same position, except I have had a humble bundle subscription from the very beginning.
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.
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).
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 100-150GB sometimes it's a waste of time to reinstall using Steam). Do you have another kind of usage that leads to these false positive?
When I graduated and got a job, one of my first aquisitions was a new game console and several titles. It sat mostly idle, because despite earning the money to afford it, now I lacked the free time. After a couple of years gathering dust I gifted it to my younger cousin.
Taking a segue, I am a 50+ man who hasn't played any games in my working life. I did play Prince of Persia 2 but never crossed level 1. Played Doom in the network mode with classmates.
Now I want to start exploring games.
I am on Ubuntu with Intel graphics. I am ready to invest in a joystick or gamepad.
What games do you guys recommend to me? Also any hardware accessories, other than GPU's, that is?
I just tried Steam, and was completely overwhelmed by choice.
The problem is that I could recommend a hundred wildly different games that you might like, but playing a hundred games just to figure out which one is right for you doesn't sound like a good use of your time. Can you give more information? You like single-player games? Classic card games like solitaire (rec: Zachtronics Solitaire Collection)? Postmodern card games (rec: Balatro)? Deckbuilding roguelikes (rec: Slay The Spire)? Actual roguelikes (rec: Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup)? Postmodern roguelikes (rec: Caves of Qud)? There's so much out there, even the cream of the crop is overwhelming to a newcomer. If you're a programmer, maybe look at the best games from Zachtronics (Spacechem, Opus Magnum, Shenzhen I/O, TIS-100, Last Call BBS... they're all pretty good).
It's hard to recommend games when you don't have a baseline taste. The past couple of years having a demo became very common on Steam, so I suggest trying some demos.
You've played a 2D platformer and a multiplayer shooter, two very popular genres with massive offerings. If you're interested in more along the same lines, just off the top of my head I'll say try Hollow Knight as a 2D platformer, and Overwatch 2 as a multiplayer shooter (this one is free). Overwatch 2 may be overwhelming for someone new to gaming.
There is a genre called cozy games for more relaxed experiences, like Journey. There are also turn-based roguelikes, and for those I would recommend Balatro.
I don't know about Ubuntu or Linux compatbility so look into that, but I know Steam's OS and Proton have made massive strides.
I'm gonna recommend Final Fantasy VI. The FF games generally aren't sequels to each other (the ones that are have titles like Final Fantasy X-2) and FF6, while on the older side, is not only very beginner-friendly, but also has quite good writing.
So-called JRPGs (Japanese Role-Playing Games) tend to offer decent bang-for-buck and are generally more controller-friendly than CRPGs (Computer Role-Playing Games). Besides the Final Fantasy games you could also check out the Persona series.
There are still a HUGE number of games you can play with Intel integrated graphics all of which are extremely good. Many of the greatest games of all time are quite old or 2D which means you don't need anything special to run them. At most I'd invest in a controller (both Xbox & PS5 controllers are compatible) but you don't even need that to play almost all games on Steam. Some cheap but great games: Hollow Knight, Celeste, Hades, Outer Wilds, Undertale, Rimworld.
I wouldn't buy a joystick if you're into Flight sims. I'd look into a Hotas setup or a virtual reality setup where the whole cockpit is simulated (VTOL VR).
I started out on Microsoft Flight Simulator back in 99-2000. I feel like that was the peak joystick purchase era.
Get a monitor with a good refresh rate, get a good gaming keyboard and mouse, potentially look into mechanical keyboards if you watch some videos and find it interesting.
Watch some YouTube PC gaming channels.
Also there's SO many games you're right it is overwhelming.
You could easily go ten years back. And buy the top ten games on some gaming site rank list.
Obligatory mentions:
- Red Dead Redemption 2
- The Last of Us
- BioShock Infinite
- The Witcher 3
- City Skylines (Sims City like)
Really depends on what category of game you like. Highly highly subjective thing these days.
You can almost make friends by aligning on the types of games you like because it's a bit of a personality litmus test.
I'd imagine a lot of people in
HackerNews play Factorio quite seriously.
Can't go wrong with Portal, although I had to look up a walkthrough from time to time in order to get past a puzzle, especially the end puzzle. I think it should play pretty well for you on Ubuntu and be a lot of fun.
Portal 2 is even better than the first one, but play them both.
You might like story driven games, like Read Dead Redemption 2, Witcher 3, Mass Effect... all on sale on Steam currently.
You can also install emulators on the Steam Deck, so you can play those games before you started your working life.
Otherwise look into how to install Valve's Proton on Ubuntu to play the games available on Steam.
Alternatively get yourself a cheap PS4 pro on eBay, which usually come with plenty of games bundled. Don't need the latest and greatest console. PS4 still has a huge library of games and you can get those cheap on eBay too.
One game that I recommend to anyone is Firewatch. It's a beautiful, linear story game with easy to understand mechanics. And it only lasts a few hours, so it's a small time investment.
I can also recommend Outer Wilds. It's a puzzle story game. It gives you a lot of freedom, with the downside that it's somewhat easier to get stuck. For this game you should buy a gamepad.
If you like single player shooters, I recommend Half-Life 2.
Hope this helps!
PS. As for peripherals, a keyboard+mouse should be plenty. Some vehicle driven games require a gamepad to play comfortably.
As for a GPU, the games I mentioned here will run on anything semi-modern. No need to buy something brand new.
There isn't really a good way to recommend a game to someone who's never played a game before - preferences regarding immersion, complex mechanics, turn-based vs live-action, etc. vary wildly. Someone who likes Europa Universalis 4 frequently does not like Assassin's Creed Valhalla, and vice versa. With these constraints I would probably recommend Cyberpunk 2077 (no gamepad), and if you decide you like live-action, Hades, and if you don't, Slay the Spire.
Regarding gamepads: you can use the xbox/playstation ones with your computer. Bluetooth is hit or miss for me (windows), but they both work really well with a USB cable. Its subjective of course, but the console manufacturers do a pretty good job with comfort and quality.
If you liked Doom, it might be fun to play through some of the newer doom games like Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal and see how they've evolved over the years.
I have a huge backlog of games I’ve bought on sale knowing I would enjoy them, but never got around to playing them. It’s well over 50% of my game library.
The problem for me is that a good game that you really like can easily eat multiple thousands of hours. It’s just a time consuming hobby. And it takes a lot of effort to get started on a new game. I can’t help but think “wouldn’t I rather spend that time improving my ranking in x or y game…”
I think this is the real reason for the metric, browsing steams sales and scooping deals for later, I wonder what the numbers would be if they compared playtime with full price purchase or purchase made not during major store-wide sales.
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.
I don't know if it still requires elevated privileges because I've played it on Linux, but if you used the Seamless Coop mod it disables EAC and uses the Steam API for multiplayer, so presumably won't require admin privileges. There's also er-patcher which I use to "fix" the framerate and comes with an option to disable EAC (and a few other nice features IMO).
I’ve bought a bunch of games just to support the creators, to vote with my dollar and say: I want more of this. Dwarf Fortress comes to mind as an example. I’ve got to sit down and learn to play it. Will probably take a week!
I’ll often buy a game (esp an Indie game) and just not have time to play it. I don’t have a ton of free time, so if a game doesn’t immediately draw me in and keep my attention, I don’t play it. I think that’s pretty common.
I’ll also buy games on a whim and never get much past the title screen.
I have more money than time these days. But when I was younger I had more time than money. So I’d pirate games. This is kind of my way of atoning.
I will buy games purely because I want them continue to be made. There’s developers that released a game I liked 10 years ago that I still buy all the games of just on the off chance the next one will be equally loved by me.
Conversely, there’s publishers that I avoid like the plague. Nothing Ubisoft or Electronic Art will ever see my disk any more.
Like courses on udemy. Most people buy a ton of courses probably for the feeling of having bought a course. Which translates apparently to already halfway there becoming that expert the courses promises you to become. Or they build a catalog and sell the account (on udemy).
About 15 or so years ago a roomate and I recognized this issue and created a simple solution that worked for us. A Google sheet where we would list games we completed and give them 5, 10, or 15 points subjectively based on the size of the game. At the end of a school term whoever got the most points would pick a dinner (take-out, dine-in, etc.) and the other would pay. For us that's all it took to break out of the habit of playing the same 2 games all the time.
I'm sure many of you are being fastidious engineers and immediately thinking about all the failure modes. But that's the delight in something so simple: we didn't have to worry about everyone else's failure modes.
I buy lots of potentially interesting games when they go on sale. Especially single player (or at least with a single player option) so I don't have to worry about servers sitting down for a lack of players.
I find for physical objects, I’m much more likely to actually use them. I have read 95+% of the physical books in my house, wear 90+% of my clothes in any given year, 95+% of the food I buy. Mainly because I’m physically limited to buying/owning a certain number of things before I run out of space. With a 150TB NAS and at least 4TB of local storage in each of my PCs (and the fact you don’t even need to download a game to buy it), it’s a lot easier to hoard digital items without using them.
I'll bet kitchen tools are big on this. How many people buy a specialized appliance like a bread maker and then use it once or never at all? If you don't use something regularly, it's easy for it to end up tucked away in a cabinet where you never think of it again.
Maybe I’m not the crowd this article is referring to, but for the most part, I wishlist games I’m interested in, then buy them on sale. As a result, I’ve played most of the games in my library.
Having said that, there are still games I haven’t played, but these are older titles when I used to follow Steam on Twitter, and would grab random games on sale.
Since moving to only buying wishlisted games (I no longer follow any other feeds of sales), I’ll only buy games I’m already interested in.
Man, those unopened hobby product photos just look like spending addiction. I still remember someone on r/headphones who had like 30 different AKG headphones.
I buy my ps5 games on disc. Most of them I treat the same as Steam. I wishlist them and occasionally do a round of checking which ones have cheapened enough to get. That because physical cheapens faster than digital on console, and you also retain long term access no matter what Sony may decide next year.
And yes, I have a few never opened console discs as well. They definitely weren't full price...
> I too participate in video game tsundoku. SteamDB has a tool that will show you how few games in your collection you have actually played. Here is mine. 2/3rds of my games were never played.
I know some people with a huge library, practically everything free. They are into game design, so in their case it's more meta than playing. Given that there are hundreds of thousands of (wannabe/student/amateur/pro) game designers and programmers, I wouldn't be surprised if there are many people with similar libraries.
Many people buy a lot of games just to give them away on steamgifts.com. I used to be heavily involved over there, giving away many thousands of game copies, and ended up with over 4,800 games in my own Steam library, and I still haven't played more than 200. I don't think I have enough days left in my life to ever play them all.
I just checked and I have 300+, yet from checking purchase history I haven't really spent that much on Steam at all. Apart from Cyberpunk I never paid much for anything.
As others have mentioned, for me it's also mostly Humble Bundle promos, paying small amounts that were just donations. Maybe once or twice there was a game I wanted.
I haven't opened it in 5 years though. I always toy with giving it away or deleting it.
I use a tracker to try and fight this, showing how many games I've started and also achievement progress in them in aggregate.
But I also buy a lot of books I intend to read later, so I almost think it's inherent to digital copies? The less friction in storing them the easier it is to buy aspirationally.
>I use a tracker to try and fight this, showing how many games I've started and also achievement progress in them in aggregate.
I've tried something similar before and it worked, for a while, but I started feeling the free time I spent gaming at best felt like a chore and at worst like a job. Nowadays I just play what I feel like and don't really bother much with completing games or not, because realistically I never will finish my backlog.
It turns out that gamers, despite being the people who fund my existence, are not fully rational actors, unless we consider some externality like they are buying games for the mental satisfaction of collecting or something.
One tactic I’ve developed for myself is I select 1, maximum 2 games I want to play from my wishlist and I get those during seasonal sale. I don’t purchase other games until the next sale unless it’s to play with my friends.
Do many more Americans than I realized pay for unlimited data caps? I try to restrict myself to 1 download per month with a family of 3 because we get pretty close to our TB cap each month and I work from home.
This makes me wonder how much consumer spending as a whole is on products that people never use. It's not like this psychology is unique to gaming. Could it be as high as 50%?
So true... out of the 5 games I have bought on steam, I have played 2 (one fully), and installed and just played briefly 1, and two other never even installed.
True for board games, ttrpg books and games, and a whole lot more. We have an abundance of cool things, but not an abundance of time and opportunities.
Yeah, I used to do bundles like the Humble Indie Bundle back in the day, but most of those games just became unplayed entries in my steam library. These days I'm a lot choosier about games I buy - it has to be either a game I plan to play right away, or a game I'm certain I'm going to play later and is on sale. Otherwise, I have too many unplayed games to keep dropping money on more.
It’s still worth buying physical books that sound interesting to you even if you don’t read them, because then you can have an impressive shelf of books in your home that you might read someday, or someone else might want to read from.
With these steam games? No physical copy means you’re just throwing money away.
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
mort96|7 months ago
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 data presented by the article.
brandall10|7 months ago
tylervigen|7 months ago
deelowe|7 months ago
HPsquared|7 months ago
y1n0|7 months ago
It’s not automatic, sometimes I just don’t feel like buying a game anymore even when it’s on sale, and I’ll drop them when if they go on sale and I don’t want them enough to pay.
But I do end up with a few games in my library I haven’t played yet.
xandrius|7 months ago
What I got is: people buy games and they don't play most of them. Is it wrong?
cAtte_|7 months ago
Kinrany|7 months ago
xingped|7 months ago
unknown|7 months ago
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bmacho|7 months ago
oc1|7 months ago
dathinab|7 months ago
- 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.
yreg|7 months ago
- donating to a charity event that gives you games
heelix|7 months ago
Looking at my queue over 20 years... likely hording. Nuts. One of the gotchas I bumped into was I really need a larger disk for games. Some of the newer stuff takes an enormous amount of space, which means it waits and waits.
szatkus|7 months ago
whoisyc|7 months ago
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 waiting seems like bad part of the equation.
https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?p=159659#p159659
I get why people put games on sale. It gets you on a list on steam and gets people to talk about you on Reddit and gets emails sent to everyone who’s wishlisted your game. It boosts your profits and I get it.
But let’s be honest, these techniques benefit the developer not the player. The developer profits from the players FOMO when a sale happens. 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.
If any thing the domain of this website already tells you everything you need to know. It’s all about marketing, aka moving money from your pocket into theirs with psychological maneuvers.
tokai|7 months ago
bombcar|7 months ago
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.
ReaperCub|7 months ago
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.
dalmo3|7 months ago
Hard disagree. Buying games on sales is a magnificent way I can expand my horizons and play random games I'd have never heard of otherwise or would've never tried.
Etheryte|7 months ago
whatevaa|7 months ago
Lot's of people buy on sale because it's too expensive for them otherwise. Factorios sales model does mean lost sales, they have just decided that it is okay for them. Game is DRM free, can be pirated with no problems if you can't afford it.
imtringued|7 months ago
It's basically a reverse auction process, where the bids start high and get lower over time.
The KSP1 DLC is basically never worth it at full price to me.
fileeditview|7 months ago
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.
raincole|7 months ago
And when every dev is doing that it hardly benefits the devs either.
levocardia|7 months ago
marcyb5st|7 months ago
masklinn|7 months ago
Lerc|7 months ago
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.
atrus|7 months ago
oefrha|7 months ago
bhaney|7 months ago
throw101010|7 months ago
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 100-150GB sometimes it's a waste of time to reinstall using Steam). Do you have another kind of usage that leads to these false positive?
28304283409234|7 months ago
It is not a game thing. It is a human thing.
yndoendo|7 months ago
Buying the tools are a step to step to fulfillment. It is easier to buy the step to fulfillment then walk the path.
Then again, some books are one offs and only used for a small portion, not full consumption.
[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-44981013
conception|7 months ago
snarf21|7 months ago
Qem|7 months ago
bhattisatish|7 months ago
What games do you guys recommend to me? Also any hardware accessories, other than GPU's, that is?
I just tried Steam, and was completely overwhelmed by choice.
kibwen|7 months ago
qudat|7 months ago
It’s a deep sea exploration / builder with a story that gets crazier and crazier.
It’s also very approachable and mostly easy to play.
seventhtiger|7 months ago
You've played a 2D platformer and a multiplayer shooter, two very popular genres with massive offerings. If you're interested in more along the same lines, just off the top of my head I'll say try Hollow Knight as a 2D platformer, and Overwatch 2 as a multiplayer shooter (this one is free). Overwatch 2 may be overwhelming for someone new to gaming.
There is a genre called cozy games for more relaxed experiences, like Journey. There are also turn-based roguelikes, and for those I would recommend Balatro.
I don't know about Ubuntu or Linux compatbility so look into that, but I know Steam's OS and Proton have made massive strides.
tmtvl|7 months ago
So-called JRPGs (Japanese Role-Playing Games) tend to offer decent bang-for-buck and are generally more controller-friendly than CRPGs (Computer Role-Playing Games). Besides the Final Fantasy games you could also check out the Persona series.
namr2000|7 months ago
brianjlogan|7 months ago
I started out on Microsoft Flight Simulator back in 99-2000. I feel like that was the peak joystick purchase era.
Get a monitor with a good refresh rate, get a good gaming keyboard and mouse, potentially look into mechanical keyboards if you watch some videos and find it interesting.
Watch some YouTube PC gaming channels.
Also there's SO many games you're right it is overwhelming.
You could easily go ten years back. And buy the top ten games on some gaming site rank list.
Obligatory mentions: - Red Dead Redemption 2 - The Last of Us - BioShock Infinite - The Witcher 3 - City Skylines (Sims City like)
Really depends on what category of game you like. Highly highly subjective thing these days.
You can almost make friends by aligning on the types of games you like because it's a bit of a personality litmus test.
I'd imagine a lot of people in HackerNews play Factorio quite seriously.
metabagel|7 months ago
Portal 2 is even better than the first one, but play them both.
uxcolumbo|7 months ago
You might like story driven games, like Read Dead Redemption 2, Witcher 3, Mass Effect... all on sale on Steam currently.
You can also install emulators on the Steam Deck, so you can play those games before you started your working life.
Otherwise look into how to install Valve's Proton on Ubuntu to play the games available on Steam.
Alternatively get yourself a cheap PS4 pro on eBay, which usually come with plenty of games bundled. Don't need the latest and greatest console. PS4 still has a huge library of games and you can get those cheap on eBay too.
Levitating|7 months ago
One game that I recommend to anyone is Firewatch. It's a beautiful, linear story game with easy to understand mechanics. And it only lasts a few hours, so it's a small time investment.
I can also recommend Outer Wilds. It's a puzzle story game. It gives you a lot of freedom, with the downside that it's somewhat easier to get stuck. For this game you should buy a gamepad.
If you like single player shooters, I recommend Half-Life 2.
Hope this helps!
PS. As for peripherals, a keyboard+mouse should be plenty. Some vehicle driven games require a gamepad to play comfortably.
As for a GPU, the games I mentioned here will run on anything semi-modern. No need to buy something brand new.
pie_flavor|7 months ago
petderek|7 months ago
If you liked Doom, it might be fun to play through some of the newer doom games like Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal and see how they've evolved over the years.
bhattisatish|7 months ago
I asked chatgpt to summarize the conversation, and this is what it came up with.
https://chatgpt.com/share/68752971-9e78-8012-bb83-5586a81d4d...
D13Fd|7 months ago
The problem for me is that a good game that you really like can easily eat multiple thousands of hours. It’s just a time consuming hobby. And it takes a lot of effort to get started on a new game. I can’t help but think “wouldn’t I rather spend that time improving my ranking in x or y game…”
qnleigh|7 months ago
luxuryballs|7 months ago
Sarkie|7 months ago
I'm buying games that I pirated as a kid.
Sunspark|7 months ago
mariusor|7 months ago
whynotmaybe|7 months ago
First from "guitar acquisition syndrome" can now become "game acquisition syndrome"
mystifyingpoi|7 months ago
999900000999|7 months ago
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.
tbrownaw|7 months ago
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.
Adverblessly|7 months ago
whatevaa|7 months ago
pradn|7 months ago
vardump|7 months ago
Why? Earlier Humble Bundle subscription... And in addition I've bought so many bundles separately I've never played.
abotsis|7 months ago
I’ll also buy games on a whim and never get much past the title screen.
I have more money than time these days. But when I was younger I had more time than money. So I’d pirate games. This is kind of my way of atoning.
Aeolun|7 months ago
Conversely, there’s publishers that I avoid like the plague. Nothing Ubisoft or Electronic Art will ever see my disk any more.
philipov|7 months ago
parhamn|7 months ago
tomw1808|7 months ago
Waterluvian|7 months ago
I'm sure many of you are being fastidious engineers and immediately thinking about all the failure modes. But that's the delight in something so simple: we didn't have to worry about everyone else's failure modes.
ryangrange|7 months ago
pembrook|7 months ago
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?
jmb99|7 months ago
bluescrn|7 months ago
Items in a digital library seem much easier to completely and utterly forget about.
aaronbaugher|7 months ago
HPsquared|7 months ago
oceansky|7 months ago
jader201|7 months ago
Having said that, there are still games I haven’t played, but these are older titles when I used to follow Steam on Twitter, and would grab random games on sale.
Since moving to only buying wishlisted games (I no longer follow any other feeds of sales), I’ll only buy games I’m already interested in.
TheChaplain|7 months ago
So I guess I fit in but still not?
viccis|7 months ago
nottorp|7 months ago
I buy my ps5 games on disc. Most of them I treat the same as Steam. I wishlist them and occasionally do a round of checking which ones have cheapened enough to get. That because physical cheapens faster than digital on console, and you also retain long term access no matter what Sony may decide next year.
And yes, I have a few never opened console discs as well. They definitely weren't full price...
B1FF_PSUVM|7 months ago
> To see your own stats go here: https://steamdb.info/calculator/
Ahah, piker ...
tgv|7 months ago
ta8645|7 months ago
herval|7 months ago
whstl|7 months ago
As others have mentioned, for me it's also mostly Humble Bundle promos, paying small amounts that were just donations. Maybe once or twice there was a game I wanted.
I haven't opened it in 5 years though. I always toy with giving it away or deleting it.
nemomarx|7 months ago
But I also buy a lot of books I intend to read later, so I almost think it's inherent to digital copies? The less friction in storing them the easier it is to buy aspirationally.
tumsfestival|7 months ago
I've tried something similar before and it worked, for a while, but I started feeling the free time I spent gaming at best felt like a chore and at worst like a job. Nowadays I just play what I feel like and don't really bother much with completing games or not, because realistically I never will finish my backlog.
masklinn|7 months ago
Nah, it also occurs plenty with physical copies. Look up tsundoku.
miffe|7 months ago
chickenzzzzu|7 months ago
gessha|7 months ago
idontwantthis|7 months ago
CodesInChaos|7 months ago
LatteLazy|7 months ago
Some games I have 1000s of hours on.
Whether a given game will be the former or the latter is hard to tell.
Given these facts it makes sense to buy a lot of games knowing I will only play a few regularly.
qnleigh|7 months ago
ardit33|7 months ago
SubiculumCode|7 months ago
shmerl|7 months ago
bigstrat2003|7 months ago
homarp|7 months ago
I buy games I might play, my kids might play. And sometimes to repay my younger self debt.
dgellow|7 months ago
teaearlgraycold|7 months ago
max_|7 months ago
deadbabe|7 months ago
With these steam games? No physical copy means you’re just throwing money away.
esafak|7 months ago
kaycey2022|7 months ago
macjohnmcc|7 months ago
Yeul|7 months ago
mhlakhani|7 months ago
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
hugh1st|7 months ago
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