36% of All Games Owned on Steam Are Never Played

[J.McMillen]

There's also buying a game and it's sequels, but not installing the later ones till you finish the first one.

 

[Sandernista]

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'm pretty sure that steam still tracks playtime when offline. That said, the fact that just over 5% of Skyrim owners haven't played it isn't surprising. I know a lot of people who owned it on the 360 or PS3 that bought it on steam, but had already played through 90% of the game. Why install that huge game when you've already beat it?

 

[Vigormortis]

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.

Well sure, but to see them having equivalent, combined playtime to that of the combined total of the thousands of other titles on Steam is still pretty astounding.

 

[Kaymish]

well in my case according to my steam list i have played 104 of 169 games and i have 48 currently installed
but you have to remember that some of those are huge steaming piles of crap that were uninstalled after finding out how huge a pile of crap they were

 

[Agente L]

36%?

More like 76%, ha!

Cursed steam sales, always bringing the pain to my wallet.

 

[TerribleAssassin]

A lot of this is impulse buys I'm willing to bet. You see that game that all your friends are playing for like £3, you play one Co-Op game and then never touch it again.

God damn Gaben and his glorious sales.

 

[michael87cn]

I buy classics that I 'never' play, but I know someday I will. Was worth the money.

 

[Baldr]

I played every game on Steam Sale, it is the Humble Bundles where the bulk of the games that never get played.

 

[-Dragmire-]

What a load of BS. I wouldn't waste my money like tha-

...

Spoiler

Age of Empires 3
Batman: Arkham City
Brutal Legend
Darksiders 2
DLC Quest
Fantasy Wars (when the fuck did I get that!?)
Grotesque Tactics
Grotesque Tactics 2
Half Life: All of them except Source and 2
Holy Avatar vs. Maidens of the Dead [small](I don't know this one, are they having a free session or is it a free-to-play game?)[/small]
King's Bounty: Warriors of the North
Prototype
Psychonauts
Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale
Skulls of the Shogun
(edit: thanks grigjd3) Spiral Knights (free-to-play)
The Stanley Parable
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2
Total War: Shogun 2
The Typing of the Dead: Overkill
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines(Shouldn't be in this list... I played it for one minute)
Wanderlust: Rebirth
War for the Overworld(it's in beta, I'll play it when it's done... probably)
The Witcher 2
Worms
Worms Blast
Worms Crazy Golf
Worms Pinball
Worms Ultimate Mayhem
Ys 1
Ys 2
Ys Origin
Ys: The Oath in Felghana

Ok, so maybe there's a couple I bought but haven't played.

 

[Infernal Lawyer]

Guilty. I'm addicted to those cheap indie bundles you get on sites like Indie Gala and Humble Bundle, and the entire bundle is often cheaper than the one game you want, meaning you get a ton of fluff you're not particularly interested in.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

To be fair, a lot of my "Pile of Shame" games are games I got as part of a bundle (be it Humble Bundle or otherwise), where I was really buying one or more different games at a still-discounted price even with the excess chaff. Though yes, a good chunk of them are also games that I bought with every intention of playing, and then just never getting around to. >.>

 

[grigjd3]

Only 36%? Geez, I ought install some of those purchases and try them out...

 

[Do4600]

These statistics really are not trustworthy. Out of the 340 games I own, I think I haven't played maybe ten, most of them were really bad games or games I didn't care to try from bundles. Like a quake 2 mission pack or rockstar's midnight club 2. According to steam I've never played a DLC, also according to steam I haven't played 1/3 of my games. Probably because they didn't even really start tracking usage until 2009, and then it was unreliable until about 2011. So I haven't played less than 3% of my games but my usage statistics say I haven't played about 35% of my games. That's over a 30% margin of error, it's really not useful information for any games before 2011, Skyrim barely makes it in.

 

[grigjd3]

Spiral Knights (pretty sure this is a free-to-play game)

Spiral Knights is free to play and a lot of work in that game was done by the artist behind these webcomics:

http://threepanelsoul.com/
http://machall.com/

 

[Xan Krieger]

So apparently it makes me a minority that never played Dota 2 and I only spent 4 hours in Team Fortress 2 which I didn't enjoy and I've never played Counter Strike. Also I never imagined Football Manager 2014 was that popular, I only have like one friend that plays it. It's not even about football, it's about soccer.

 

[lunavixen]

The unplayed games on my steam library are ones that've come from humble bundles (like the Sam & Max Games, W&G and the Hector series) or are games that my brother got duplicates of and gifted to me despite me having little interest in them, and some of the ones I have with low play time are either short and finished, or I didn't like them after a short time. The figures given are too broad without explanation, you can't go iff play time alone

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

So apparently it makes me a minority that never played Dota 2 and I only spent 4 hours in Team Fortress 2 which I didn't enjoy and I've never played Counter Strike. Also I never imagined Football Manager 2014 was that popular, I only have like one friend that plays it. It's not even about football, it's about soccer.

its called football not soccer you...!

you put foot on ball, it doesnt get any easier

 

[Strazdas]

i am guilty of it as well, but do plan to play majority of them and the limiting factor is time, the rest are from humblebundles that had unified keys when i really only wanted 1 of them but had to activate all 8 at once and stuff like that.

I do know a person who has over 700 steam games. he uses steam roulette (its real) to randomly chose a game he hasnt played every week.

The main offenders probably being the humble-bundle games. When you buy a 1 dollar bundle because you want 1 game, there's going to be 5 games just gathering dust in the library.

yeah, those are annoying. whats worse, is they dont always give you seperate keys. when they di i always take that one key and leave the rest inactive not to cloud my steam list.

I have it, never played it. The biggest issue is that it's a really big game and my free time is rather limited right now. Someday, when I get a big chunk of free time to play with. In the meantime, I've been working through the pile of shorter games on my list.

thats what holidays are for!
No, but seriuosly, dont try that. i once dedicated a holiday to a single huge game. i didnt felt rested after that.

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

people actually do that? is few pixels near your avatar in steam worth the money? i can understand buying to support developer or using humble bundle as charity donation and not caring about the games themselves, but for a badge?
then i guess there are people who buy games just to boost their gamerscore on xbox, so its kidna like that.

 

[Strazdas]

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.

I am not sure about BL2 but planetside 2 has a non-steam version. and if i learn anything playing games that have both versions is that non-steam version owners dont want to connect their games to steam ever. this of course lowers their steam statistics as it only shows portion of the population playing.
Terraria is the new minecraft as far as obsession goes.

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.

Ill do two numbers.
One for steam, and one for my overall games including nonsteam and those that i plan to buy but i didnt yet.
the first one, steam is 3/49 games played.
The second one, including games i played outside steam and ones that are on my list to play when i have time but not bought yet 124 of 266 games played (the list grows and shrinks sometimes, so its only a snapshot value)

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.

well, this weeks humble bundle is quite poor offering. ive seen and bought from some that sold half a million copies. besides, they happen every week, so there is like what 50+ of them so far, and thats only one of many bundle providers. now i have bought couple hunble bundles where only 1 game from them i was going to play. that usually means 7 games left unplayed, and while i tend not to cash-in these codes when they are seperate, most people probably do. so if we got roughtly rounded 25 million users with 7 games they dont want to play (and thats assuming anyone ever only bought from hunblebundle and not others) thats sewerely skewing statistics.

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.

as a person that plays both eve and tanks i can understand how there is no time left for anything else

24% are played for between one and ten hours.

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

a fair amount of AAA titles can be completed in less than 10 hours. and im not even talking shooters solely. Mafia 2 can be completed in 8 hours. Prototyle games can be completed under 10 hours. If you dont do sidequests - all fallout games can easily be compelted within 10 hours. Assasin creed games can be completed in under 10 hours if you dont explore.

I'm pretty sure that steam still tracks playtime when offline. That said, the fact that just over 5% of Skyrim owners haven't played it isn't surprising. I know a lot of people who owned it on the 360 or PS3 that bought it on steam, but had already played through 90% of the game. Why install that huge game when you've already beat it?

beating vanilla skyrim is like less than 5% of that game.

 

[JaceArveduin]

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.

as a person that plays both eve and tanks i can understand how there is no time left for anything else

And to make it worse, I've learned a card shop just opened up here, so I've been spending a few hours a day there playing Magic and faffing about in general. Like today the guy had some harem anime running, and we were playing "Spot That Fanservice!" We decided if it was a drinking game, we'd all be dead before the intro was over. Seriously, in one episode I'm pretty sure we could replace all of the blood a Blue Whale has with alcohol.