36% of All Games Owned on Steam Are Never Played

[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.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

This is not at all surprising, but the Skyrim statistics should raise a flag. Who buys Skyrim and never plays it?

More likely it's people installing the game and playing it offline. Not everyone wants Steam to track everything they do and installing a game and never running it online doesn't appear in the public profile statistics.

i kind of did, i gave that game like 9 hours to try to pull me in, and it failed miserably


i dont understand the hype, i bought it because i loved fallout 3, but its worse in almost every way, worse story, worse setting, hell even somehow worse combat, what a waste of 15 bucks, maybe i should mod it into something good

 

[Black Reaper]

That's why i don't claim all the games in my humble bundles, i can just gift them someday if i don't plan on playing them

 

[Someone Depressing]

I look at my Steam library, and I panic; there's no game that starts with "c", so I go buy a cheap thing starting with "c" so that I don't panic and shoot myself in the face, jump out a window or kill someone.

No seriously guys, this is still pretty interesting. I only ever buy things I want to play, so I'm suprised at how many games go unplayed. If developers made demoes for their games, I imagine this wouldn't happen.

 

[Yal]

This is not at all surprising, but the Skyrim statistics should raise a flag. Who buys Skyrim and never plays it?

I bought Skyrim in the winter sale and just haven't got to it yet. Someday!

I think it took me two years to finally get around to Oblivion so, you know, this is not without precedent.

 

[kaizen2468]

all the games i haven't installed are games i bought in bundles for like 80% off because i wanted one or two at a good price.

 

[Zetatrain]

Yeah can't argue with that. Final fantasy XIV and World of Tanks have been sucking up most of my gaming time.

 

[Bad Jim]

Remember kids, Steam Sales are not your friend.

Nope. It doesn't matter if half the games you own are unplayed or grossly underplayed. If you got them 75% off, you still got a good deal on average.