36% of All Games Owned on Steam Are Never Played

[Xman490]

Some of the other information it gathered tells us stuff that we already should know - DoTA 2 and Team Fortress 2 are the most-played games on Steam by a considerable margin, and that Call of Duty players spend a lot more time in the game's multiplayer mode than its singleplayer mode.

Source: Ars Technica [http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/04/introducing-steam-gauge-ars-reveals-steams-most-popular-games/2/]

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It's interesting how all of the top 5 most played there are multiplayer games, including Counter-Strike and Left 4 Dead 2. Also the top 10 are well-known and acclaimed games that can run on computers that are either powerful for being few years old or just not very powerful.

 

[Vigormortis]

Honestly I find this a bit misleading at least for my personal statistics. I've had a steam account for over 9 years dating back to early 2005. Given that steam didn't start tracking gametime until mid-2009, that is roughly 4.5 years of gameplay just completely unaccounted for. With several hundred games on my account ~20% of those don't actually have gametime accounted on them because I played them before steam even had time tracking. Games like counter-srtike that should have 100's of hours sit at 0 because I've moved on to other games and haven't gone back since. Plus there are the games like Doom and Quake that I play for an hour or two here and there that don't record gametime at all. That said I have quite a few games I have yet to play, but that number probably comes in much closer to 10% of my library.

I realize that I've had an account waaaaay longer than the average user but I still think that it's worth mentioning that that feature wasn't even introduced until over halfway through Steam's current lifecycle.

Exactly. And Ars Technica even admits in the article some of their statistics are likely skewed because of factors like the ones you mentioned.

'Course, this won't stop the oncoming *****-fest about how "Steam Sales damage the industry!" or some such nonsense.

Regardless, I saw this article last night. It has some pretty surprising (and some not so surprising) insights.

One such surprise (and non-surprise) was the list of top/most played games on Steam. I would have thought Borderlands 2 and Planetside 2 would have been much higher, whereas I would have expected Terraria and Alien Swarm to have been much lower.

Though, the biggest surprise was the breakdown of total hours played across all titles. The combined total playtime of Dota 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Source, Counter-Strike, Civilization V, and Skyrim is almost equal to the combined playtime of all other titles.

That just....blows my mind.

 

[GAunderrated]

Lets play a fun game everyone. Look at your steam library and state the % of games you haven't played yet. Mine is siting at 58%.

Damn real life responsibilities I still need to play the original half life.

 

[duwenbasden]

19/57 for me (33.3_%)

- "I might play [GAME] sometime in the future. I'll just buy it now." killed it.

 

[Ratty]

I've got a few games that show no or very little time because I play them in offline mode. But yeah I do have a lot of games in my backlog on and off Steam. Though to be fair most of my Steam games are at least installed.

 

[BraveSirRobin]

Though, the biggest surprise was the breakdown of total hours played across all titles. The combined total playtime of Dota 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Source, Counter-Strike, Civilization V, and Skyrim is almost equal to the combined playtime of all other titles.

That just....blows my mind.

Honestly that's one of the things in the article I have no trouble believing. Unlike most games designed to be played once or twice. Each of those six have the benefit of immense replayability and extensive brand presence regardless of personal opinion. Each of those also has the backing of an incredibly old and popular franchise. When you couple that with the fact that Dota 2 and TF2 are literally free, and that probably ~10% of people DON'T own one of the counter strikes by now, and that they routinely just have more players than other games most of the time, it's pretty easy to see that gametime builds up quickly.

 

[softclocks]

I agree with there might be areas that the automated process of this could be considered getting false information. I also wonder how many of those could be DLC or expansions.

For me my non-played category for Steam is very low if you don't count the games that were part of bundles, I think out of almost two hundred games I have less then ten I have never played and most of those are recent purchases that I have to make sure there is data left on my monthly bandwidth allotment.

That's very admirable.

I'm hoping to cut down on my backlog during the easter holidays, but it's so easy to go back to the games I already know and love.

A couple of other exceptions would be games that I've cleared in offline mode (like Dead Space 1 and 2)and still show up as not-played because offline mode doesn't register gametime.

 

[BrotherRool]

If this is because of the Humble Bundles then it's okay, but I don't know if the Humble Bundle sells enough copies to make this level of impact (their weekly sale and current bundle combined have only sold 100,000 units which is nothing averaged over 172 million users). If it's because of steam sales, then slowly people are going to get better at making purchasing decisions they want and some of that money is going to dry off.

It's somewhat bad for the game creators as well. If no-one plays your bundled game or game on sale then no-one is going to care about the other games you make or follow you on twitter or spread word of mouth etc

I can totally see that. I keep putting off The Longest Journey, which means it and Dreamfall remain in my backlog. When I got the X-Series bundle, it was made pretty clear to me that Albion Prelude is the easiest to start with. Of course, I couldn't even figure out that one, so there's no way I'm getting into the other five...

Then there's all those "Ooh! I loved this game as a kid! And it's only a dollar!" purchases that then collected virtual dust.

I love Dreamfall as a game, it's such a different way of making an adventure game, I'd totally recommend getting round to it sometime.

 

[OManoghue]

The games on my Steam list I've never played were parts of like, $5.00 bundles and i didn't want them in the first place. But I wanted the sequel, or something

 

[DanielBrown]

Yeah, I also blame bundles. I haven't bothered buying any for a long time(lack of good games imo) and I got 143 games. A year ago I had ~7. In many cases I bought a bundle because I was intrested in one game out of four-six.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

those evil humble bundles, some of them i havent even played, like the EA bundle i havent played a single game from that bundle, well except for burnout paradise for 30 minutes


im surprised football manager gets so much playtime

 

[thiosk]

-games i bought because they were objectives in steam sales to get a badge or achievement

I've never thought of making a purchase like this. I thought these were just neat little customer interaction things.

The humble bundles have been far worse than this. I bought a couple of those and have played NOTHING. Doc clock and the toasted sandwich of time? or whatever?

I picked up dark souls for ~4 buckaroos and just haven't flipped it on. I bought don't starve and project zomboid at the same time, and those have eaten WAY too much time.

 

[UNHchabo]

Well i have about 10 games that appear as duplicates thanks to their Mac OS version. Quite a few of my games have had the time re-set on them simply because i played them so long ago. I'm not sure if it is a quirk with steam's systems but I've been on steam for a good number of years and at least 20 of the games I've played to death in the past have only one or two hours displayed on them.

Yep, the Ars article has been updated to mention this: Valve only started counting time played in March 2009. This is why I only have 0.3 hours in Half-Life 2: Episode Two, but 22 out of 22 achievements. Gimme credit for my gnome!

 

[JaceArveduin]

Welp, I'm one of the 300,000 that hasn't played their copy of Skyrim, who's going to own up as one of the other 299,999?

Of course, I bought it on sale after I'd put an easy 200 hours into my friends 360 version, and while I know the PC version is much, much better, I just haven't been in the mood. I also blame Tanks, EVE, League, Tale of Two Wastelands, Planetside 2, and life.

 

[Elberik]

24% are played for between one and ten hours.

A fair amount of indie games can be completed in less than 10 hours.

 

[Vivi22]

Honestly, I want to know the same number for consoles or non-Steam PC games (even though I know we'll never get it). How many of us either know people or bought games ourselves on console that we either never played, or barely played? I know I've done it. Wouldn't surprise me if the discrepancy isn't as large as people might think it is.

 

[GothmogII]

Guilty. As. Charged. 203 games. TF2 875 hours. Granted, I do tend to finish the games I've gotten recently, Wolf Among us and The Walking Dead being two, mainly because they've that kind of serial factor, I'm invested in the story and get anticipated for the next chapter and will play it immediately as it's released. Most of the other stuff is just from Humble Bundles of Steam sales on the justification that I will play it -sometime-.

I've stopped buying games altogether now until I can work through the backlog.

There's other reasons though for not playing a game, I may get a game because I think it -looks- good. Impire was one such, and never again, never have I felt so cheated.

 

[flying_whimsy]

Those are some interesting statistics, even if there are some issues with the integrity of the data (no counting offline mode, dlc packs not showing as played, etc.). One issue I didn't see in the discussion is that steam hasn't always tracked hours; I have a lot of hours in valve games from before they started counting the hours that never count towards those charts and graphs.

I must confess to having a fair number of games I haven't played (especially since I've bought a few humble bundles); I do get around to at least trying them as I pick my way through the back catalog (except multiplayer-only games: not a fan), but that's only when I can pry myself away from other games or when FTL has given me a spectacularly brutal spanking. Also, Amnesia terrifies me and I haven't been able to bring myself to play much of it or the other penumbra games, but I wanted to buy them to support the survival horror genre.

I just did the math and I'm only at 20% unplayed (although it isn't all reflected in the hours or playtime listed on steam), but since I do actually mean to get to just about all of them at some point it's not too bad. Also, I am one of the people that did play HL2: Lost Coast. I really enjoyed it, too.

 

[Something Amyss]

I'm actually surprised it's not higher. Though in my library, I find a lot of the games I never have played are the ones I didn't want in Humble Bundles or the like.

Remember kids, Steam Sales are not your friend.

That should have been obvious even without this data.

I blame World of Tanks it's devouring all my spare time but I want every tank!

I blame Civ V. I haven't had much time to play anything of late, but I played like five gazillion hours of it in a two month span, while all my other games were looking at me like starving puppies.

Quite a few of my games have had the time re-set on them simply because i played them so long ago.

I didn't even know this is a thing, though looking at my library there are a few games with no time on them that I've played, on Steam, but not for a while.

Come to think about it, when I looked at one of those stat sites, I see more than a few games I have played fairly recently that are at 0 hours.

Huh. Wonder how much this weights the statistics.

I agree with there might be areas that the automated process of this could be considered getting false information. I also wonder how many of those could be DLC or expansions.

I counted fifteen on mine just with a once-over. Two were linked to games I played but were listed as unplayed.

I seriously wonder how many unplayed games I really have now, considering how much of my list of unplayed games is lies and DLC.

 

[Johnson McGee]

I am steadily munching through my steam backlog, at least I was until FTL: AE came out. The humble bundle is the main culprit for my unplayed library though.