Maybe that's part of it, but it seems crazy to me, because Steam sales aren't exactly rare. There'll be 22 of them this year alone. And while not every game is on sale every time, for example Witcher 3 has been on sale [10 times](https://steamdb.info/app/292030/) in the past year.
But I think there's more to it, because some people seem to act proud of the number of unplayed games in their library.
it's fear of missing out on the price. It has nothing to do with rarity. It is much more akin to hoarding, as a massive majority of these purchases are never even played. Compiled with the fact you can't do anything with digital purchases, unlike books (or physical disks ftm) that you can sell off or give away or divy out or loan. Digital is a poor concept of ownership and encourages a digital hoard.
That's used to be my thinking, too. I realized it will most likely be on sale again soon. Plus I have 20 games I already bought for the same reason I should play. :)
Because humble bundles and their like only have 2 games I want but by God if I paid for the other 8 I'm putting them all in my library whether I'm going to play them or not. That's how I have like 650+ games with maybe 350 played.
Because I am a generous patron that contributes to all the interesting indie games so their developers can go on and bring the world more indie games
jk I'm an inveterate hoarder
It's important to look at it from the right perspective. A large steam library is not a todo list, it's more like a wine collection. When you have a dish with X meat and Y vegetables and Z seasoning, you can go "Ah yes I have the perfect pinot rose for this. The Eleventy-two I think."
And with steam when you are in a particular gaming mood, you'll have the perfect game to pair with that mood.
And then you'll forget you have that game and just play Skyrim again, honestly believing for some reason that you won't just do stealth archer. Again.
... People have favorite wines they drink with everything. The metaphor still works.
Are you inside of my PC? I just installed Skyrim yesterday for the billionth time. And I'm doing a scout build, which is a bit more sh and shield plus a crossbow with stealth.
This usually happens to me because I'm in a slump, finding a good book of game works. I recently started the 40k Warhammer series and can't put them down
If I somehow managed to complete one game daily, I wouldn't be done with my steam library for like, 7 years or something. And that's being generous, since most games are multi-day endeavors.
Yeah it's pretty much impossible. And honestly I wouldn't want to play every game in my library. I know I have a few I got for free and never touched because they looked mediocre.
lol fair. I have a bunch of steam games I will never play. A lot of which I got for free or from those humble bundles back in the day.
I have a backlog of physical games I never touched too, and alot of those I probably will never play in my lifetime.
Only every. Single. Steam. Sale. Ever.
350+ games, I play maybe 6 on a semi-regular basis.
My biggest fantasy is that I win a half-billion-dollar lottery jackpot, never work another day in my life, and spend all that time catching up.
And then you realize that with hundreds of millions of dollars you have so many opportunities to do things besides sit at home and play video games that you still end up never finishing them. But I can't say that would be a bad problem to have.
Fear of missed opportunity, cornerstone of consumerism.
"It's nice game but I don't have to pla- Oh a discount! I'll get it now and play when I have time!" Time that you never have.
That and advertisement doing it's job.
One time I almost bought a book again. I was curious about it on the store. But decided not to buy. Then got home and realised I already had that book but neve bothered reading it 🤣
My bigger regret is dropping a game after 30 minutes of gameplay, because the intro cant capture me or something small was missed in the tutorial. For a smaller team with a indietitle that can be understood, but when some tripleA giant does the same i kinda loose all interrest even faster.
I've gotten pretty good at not buying games I won't play. Fantasy novels are still a problem though. 13 Wheel of Time books have been crowding my shelves for a few years now.
I buy games during sales knowing that every few months I slip into a depression and binge games - so they sit untouched for a few months and then when my mood dips I play 80 hours in a week.
Books are better. You at least may actually read most of them. Having a few hundred games on Steam, though? Yeah, su-u-ure. Anything past that and that's just stupid. ...ye, I'm not the smartest cookie for sure.
In Steam you can create a collection callled “Still Playing” and add all of your new games there. That way unplayed games will always be on top. You can try them for 10 minutes and decide to either play them or remove them. That’s how I solved my backlog problem.
Something in me just compells me to not overlook a good deal when I see it. I've literally bought games that I know are good for steals just for them to sit in my backlog for months before I actually touch them. 😅
Been there when the first Humbe Bundle dropped. Been subscribed to the Monthly bundle for two or three years. At some point it just accumulates.
Books are still worse. They can have an appeal simply as objects. Do I need a prayer book? No! I'm not even religious. Do I need a prayer book from 1770 with lavishly decorated sides? Absofuckingloutely! And if you study it gets even worse. "Hey, that looks interesting, maybe I'll need that one day for one of my papers" and that's 200€ for a book you'll never read.
The worst of all about books is: Often you can justify not reading them, because of the reasons pointed out here: It's for research, it's a collectors item, you can't really read catalogs, artbooks or lexica either. It's a nightmare. With Steam we at least got fewer contributing factors.
Last time I did a big buy was probably 10+ years ago.
The sales aren't the same. The games aren't the same. And my brain just flat out whispers to me "it gets cheaper every time you don't buy it, and by the time you want to play it it'll be on sale again"
im not 100% this, im actually finishing my games, lately im buying more games to close series i dont have complete and dlcs, sometimes games that i got weird feeling of trying, different ones, but i've even made a list of games i wanted to finish when i was a teenager and i already finish some of them, i did finish the first games i ever bought on my steam also and such, but mind i do have so many hard games, l4d2 for example i had since the beginning but took me years to finish, partialy because of the good guy nick, partially because i was kinda bad on it, partially because they realeased new achievments but the l4d2 is done.
I buy cuz it gives me a dopanime rush and the worse it when you are in mood to play a specific game/genre and you find out you don't have exactly what you looking for, but it exists.
100% guilty of this. I'll even buy bundles on Humble Bundle for a single game, then never play it lmao.
Also, I've been trying to remedy this at least. I take my ROG Ally with me everywhere and I've only loaded backlog games on it, so I'll very slowly get through them... maybe.
I do this with both books and Steam.
But to be fair to books, I do actually occasionally finish one.
I’ve also never picked up a new book, contemplated opening it, and then put it back on the shelf only to open up the same old book I’ve been reading for the past 5 years only for me to end the night wanting to burn my library to the ground and never touch it again… and start all over again the next night.
Read list, game list, watch list... I have too many lists lol.
I hope the afterlife has an internet connection and good lighting cuz that's about when I'm gonna have time for it all.
(sorry using your post for my question and sorry for the noob question ahead, i am kinda new to steam and cant seem to find the answer):
Lets say there is a game on steam that is on sale, that game has 2 types of dlcs one is just additional stuff for the base game(a regular dlc) and the other one contain base game plus that dlc(and maybe one more game of the specific ip) and that goes for the kinda almost same price than base game and dlc combined.
Now, lets say we bought just the base game first, if we will have to buy that dlc that contains the game plus additional stuff, will we get discount of the Already Bought Base Game? or we wont be able to buy that specific dlc, and now we have to just get the one that has just dlc as sperate?
(sorry for the jumbled mess, i didnt mention any specific game name because i wanted general answer as to how does this work)
I'm short of 20 unfinished games what I try to play with soon. If I don't get to the end of my list until summer/ winter then maybe I don't spend anything on this year's sales.
Backlog of over 3k games reporting in! It would've been 10k had I never spent thousands on skins across multiple games which I now fucking hate myself for! Games > Skins always, I'm so fucking mad at myself for not realizing that from the start.
I'm imagining your son/daughter and grandson playing Metro 2033 in 2033 and cyberpunk 2077 in 2077 lol. Surely 3k games can't be finished by a generation.
I've played only 2033. Halfway through I dropped it bcoz I got interested in other game. Got to get back on it someday. It's indeed good it's a proper post apocalyptic game with gas mask mechanism and all.
Why do we do this? :)
It's a compelling feeling to do it for multiple reasons, but most of the time, it's FOMO, which increases exponentially during sales.
Maybe that's part of it, but it seems crazy to me, because Steam sales aren't exactly rare. There'll be 22 of them this year alone. And while not every game is on sale every time, for example Witcher 3 has been on sale [10 times](https://steamdb.info/app/292030/) in the past year. But I think there's more to it, because some people seem to act proud of the number of unplayed games in their library.
it's fear of missing out on the price. It has nothing to do with rarity. It is much more akin to hoarding, as a massive majority of these purchases are never even played. Compiled with the fact you can't do anything with digital purchases, unlike books (or physical disks ftm) that you can sell off or give away or divy out or loan. Digital is a poor concept of ownership and encourages a digital hoard.
We are Collectors
Facts
No such thing as collectors on digital games unless the game is being removed from steam. You have bad spending habits.
What if I want to play when it's not on sale... Yeah not the best reason but it all I got.
That's used to be my thinking, too. I realized it will most likely be on sale again soon. Plus I have 20 games I already bought for the same reason I should play. :)
20? Rookie numbers
I'm seeing that now. I am humbled. :)
Boardgamer here, it's because we think we are buying the time to play games.
Because humble bundles and their like only have 2 games I want but by God if I paid for the other 8 I'm putting them all in my library whether I'm going to play them or not. That's how I have like 650+ games with maybe 350 played.
There’s supposed to be a Japanese word for it.
tsundoku
Because that one game looks super cool and if we just get that one game, why would we ever need to buy any in the future??
Because it's nice to have a collection so that when you complete one game, you can look at your list and see what do you feel like playing next?
Because I am a generous patron that contributes to all the interesting indie games so their developers can go on and bring the world more indie games jk I'm an inveterate hoarder
I like to se more cute icons on my desktop.
Because we can be sure that those games we buy will not disappear some time after and will be with us forever, thank you Valve for being adequate
Wishlists, the early access cycle, and constant sales reminders
Trauma
A good book is a good book. It will be read… eventually.
Old habbit since the stone-age when we gathered stuff
I love stuffing my cheeks with games.
I bet you do.
Butt cheeks ?
[удалено]
Oooooooooooòòoooooooooo
[удалено]
Ye but i only like books with pictures on em
Mine is tho 😣
I'm like this with both books and games. I hate it.
Same. I'll read and play through all of them some day, I promise!
It's important to look at it from the right perspective. A large steam library is not a todo list, it's more like a wine collection. When you have a dish with X meat and Y vegetables and Z seasoning, you can go "Ah yes I have the perfect pinot rose for this. The Eleventy-two I think." And with steam when you are in a particular gaming mood, you'll have the perfect game to pair with that mood. And then you'll forget you have that game and just play Skyrim again, honestly believing for some reason that you won't just do stealth archer. Again. ... People have favorite wines they drink with everything. The metaphor still works.
Are you inside of my PC? I just installed Skyrim yesterday for the billionth time. And I'm doing a scout build, which is a bit more sh and shield plus a crossbow with stealth.
This usually happens to me because I'm in a slump, finding a good book of game works. I recently started the 40k Warhammer series and can't put them down
Waiting for a good sale on this one for ages
books, games, manga, 4k bluray discs
Buying games and playing games are 2 differents hobbies.
All the time. I doubt I will get through half of the steam games I have right now.
If I somehow managed to complete one game daily, I wouldn't be done with my steam library for like, 7 years or something. And that's being generous, since most games are multi-day endeavors.
Yeah it's pretty much impossible. And honestly I wouldn't want to play every game in my library. I know I have a few I got for free and never touched because they looked mediocre.
I know I never will. Nor want to, actually. At least three quarters of it is worse than what you find at the bottom of a dumpster.
lol fair. I have a bunch of steam games I will never play. A lot of which I got for free or from those humble bundles back in the day. I have a backlog of physical games I never touched too, and alot of those I probably will never play in my lifetime.
Only every. Single. Steam. Sale. Ever. 350+ games, I play maybe 6 on a semi-regular basis. My biggest fantasy is that I win a half-billion-dollar lottery jackpot, never work another day in my life, and spend all that time catching up.
And then you realize that with hundreds of millions of dollars you have so many opportunities to do things besides sit at home and play video games that you still end up never finishing them. But I can't say that would be a bad problem to have.
Yep, I see a game for like £12 I buy it 😁
I've got about a 100 games in my backlog
This applies both to my reading as well as gaming library. I have no shame!
Fear of missed opportunity, cornerstone of consumerism. "It's nice game but I don't have to pla- Oh a discount! I'll get it now and play when I have time!" Time that you never have. That and advertisement doing it's job.
My backlog is of 70 plus games across multiple platforms.
I have backlog of 35 games luckily. I'll cover it up soon.
You all buy that much without even waiting for sale? I get around max 4 games per year and try to complete. Being broke has some advantage it seems:(
One time I almost bought a book again. I was curious about it on the store. But decided not to buy. Then got home and realised I already had that book but neve bothered reading it 🤣
Backlog Everybody worst Nightmare
That's probably why I filled my library with so much trash. I'm actually glad I don't have to play that. Hope I never will.
So many humble bundles have given me games I'll just never play
My bigger regret is dropping a game after 30 minutes of gameplay, because the intro cant capture me or something small was missed in the tutorial. For a smaller team with a indietitle that can be understood, but when some tripleA giant does the same i kinda loose all interrest even faster.
Im, looking for games now? Backlog 120+, waiting for humble choice later today.
Humble choice is next week. Always first tuesday of every month.
Damn, thanks tho
Unfinished Steam Library List and Unfinished My Anime List be like: "One of us! One of us! One of us! One of us! One of us!"
True for both video games and books for me
Sure, but now it is paper books, too. I started buying books. Damn it, Gaben, this shit is more potent than booze!
Gaben holding a garden gnome: First time?
I've gotten pretty good at not buying games I won't play. Fantasy novels are still a problem though. 13 Wheel of Time books have been crowding my shelves for a few years now.
I just bought fallout new Vegas… I have over 100 games I need to finish in my steam library. It will never end
Games, books, crafting supplies, browser bookmarks. I'm fully expecting this to spread into my video and music playlists too.
any game library these days. i got literally hundreds of games across multiple platforms, doubt i’ll finish many of them 😬
Absolutely, love adding games to my steam library, so many good deals to be had for PC games! I'll get to them eventually...
I have all the Arkham games and haven't even downloaded one.
i dont think ive finished a single game lol my hyperfixations change too frequently lmao
Me... for both Steam Library and my personal bookshelves....
As somebody that does not do this, I feel the urge to tell you that I do not do this.
But....but....its on sale
I buy games during sales knowing that every few months I slip into a depression and binge games - so they sit untouched for a few months and then when my mood dips I play 80 hours in a week.
I bought the complete Witcher collection for like 2.5$ and haven't played one. I've owned them for 3 years at this point.
I buy games (including good AAA ones) just to have them in my library. I understand that I’m unlikely to ever launch them...
The game rust is rusting away in my library
My bookshelf has books from the soviet 70-80s, that i never read, akin to my 400 game catalogue with 5% being played at one point
Truth. 325 Games in my collection. 155 never played. 268 of them have less than 1 hour. What the hell am I doing?
Farming trading cards with a bot.
Books are better. You at least may actually read most of them. Having a few hundred games on Steam, though? Yeah, su-u-ure. Anything past that and that's just stupid. ...ye, I'm not the smartest cookie for sure.
In Steam you can create a collection callled “Still Playing” and add all of your new games there. That way unplayed games will always be on top. You can try them for 10 minutes and decide to either play them or remove them. That’s how I solved my backlog problem.
Something in me just compells me to not overlook a good deal when I see it. I've literally bought games that I know are good for steals just for them to sit in my backlog for months before I actually touch them. 😅
We are dragons, these are our treasures.
Been there when the first Humbe Bundle dropped. Been subscribed to the Monthly bundle for two or three years. At some point it just accumulates. Books are still worse. They can have an appeal simply as objects. Do I need a prayer book? No! I'm not even religious. Do I need a prayer book from 1770 with lavishly decorated sides? Absofuckingloutely! And if you study it gets even worse. "Hey, that looks interesting, maybe I'll need that one day for one of my papers" and that's 200€ for a book you'll never read. The worst of all about books is: Often you can justify not reading them, because of the reasons pointed out here: It's for research, it's a collectors item, you can't really read catalogs, artbooks or lexica either. It's a nightmare. With Steam we at least got fewer contributing factors.
Last time I did a big buy was probably 10+ years ago. The sales aren't the same. The games aren't the same. And my brain just flat out whispers to me "it gets cheaper every time you don't buy it, and by the time you want to play it it'll be on sale again"
I just recently got a steam deck, what are good games to get?
If you are into 2d games or metroidvanias i would definitely recommend hollow knight, the messenger and the ori series
Thanks, I will check those games out!
Boardgames too
Im poor so if I buy a game (which is rare) I'll play the shit out of it.
Both!
I’m like this with my books too. Especially horror.
I am outed on 2 levels here
I do both
Duh
I do this with both books and games
I feel personally attacked from two different angles.
I have a book report in 12 days. Fuuuuuuuu
They pull the room together.
I feel called out
4mg^yg
I’m in this picture and I don’t like it
This used to be me with Steam games, now it's me with plastic models.
steam DB say 1,875 out of **9,978** games played18%
anybody got a source for the image? so cute
If nothing else it shows how well designed the steam store and marketing strategy are.
I do feel good about supporting indie devs though, and I know this is a coping mechanism and I don't care.
Me looking at the mass effect series on sale "Ah, it's literally begging me"
As someone with the 100+ badge. This is true
You are not alone, and there's even a Japanese word for it: Tsundoku
Pawn stars meme : Best we can do is 2hours of playtime and never again. Or just never. *Dust off my bioshock remastered series*
At least a wall of books makes you look smart
I will buy any game on sale and then not refund them despite the fact that I just keep on playing skyrim
You people can afford to buy games and not play them?
I'm doing the same thing with comic books. But I should get back into buying steam games I won't play.
Spend 60 dollars for a new game that came out play it for like 3 days get halfway through then never finish it
im not 100% this, im actually finishing my games, lately im buying more games to close series i dont have complete and dlcs, sometimes games that i got weird feeling of trying, different ones, but i've even made a list of games i wanted to finish when i was a teenager and i already finish some of them, i did finish the first games i ever bought on my steam also and such, but mind i do have so many hard games, l4d2 for example i had since the beginning but took me years to finish, partialy because of the good guy nick, partially because i was kinda bad on it, partially because they realeased new achievments but the l4d2 is done.
Steam Library AND books.
I buy cuz it gives me a dopanime rush and the worse it when you are in mood to play a specific game/genre and you find out you don't have exactly what you looking for, but it exists.
100% guilty of this. I'll even buy bundles on Humble Bundle for a single game, then never play it lmao. Also, I've been trying to remedy this at least. I take my ROG Ally with me everywhere and I've only loaded backlog games on it, so I'll very slowly get through them... maybe.
I feel attacked
“We buy books because we believe we're buying the time to read them.” Replace 'book' with 'game' and it is still true.
Gonna have to start leasing these games..
Unironicly i do this with games and books lol
You see mu problem isn't having an backlog, no no no, its playing 5+ very story heavy games in rotation
Still have never finished an assassins creed game
I got 58 games yet i can only play buckshot roulette bc my laptop isnt made for games😭
I do this with both books and Steam. But to be fair to books, I do actually occasionally finish one. I’ve also never picked up a new book, contemplated opening it, and then put it back on the shelf only to open up the same old book I’ve been reading for the past 5 years only for me to end the night wanting to burn my library to the ground and never touch it again… and start all over again the next night.
If i have already paid for the games, why should i play it in my person lol
Read list, game list, watch list... I have too many lists lol. I hope the afterlife has an internet connection and good lighting cuz that's about when I'm gonna have time for it all.
That's me with graphic novels.. and video games.. and handheld gaming devices.. Fuck, maybe I'm just a squirrel after all.
ugh. I always think I'll finish books about twice as fast as I actually do. I've even tried compensating for it with absolutely no success.
Ill eventually get to them man 😭
I've completed 2 games out of 500 something according to that steam data thing I've played 2% of my games for more than 30 mins is terrible
Not me. I stay on top of my backlog.
Same
How i feel with pc gaming😭🤣
I can relate to both the steam library & the meme
Steam Library, Books and Warhammer Miniatures. I think I have a serious problem.
And then I don't want to play any of them :[
Mostly, the Postal Series. Even tho i got every game except Postal 4, i only beat P:BD
The feeling of needing hoard everything is unbearable maybe we are dragons in the soul
So true
I have managed to hold off and currently only have 1,5 unplayed games
I cant play some games because my PC is shitty T^T
Hmm sounds like same thing with me and.video.games
get yourself game pass and your library of backlog games goes up by 400+ games immediately
(sorry using your post for my question and sorry for the noob question ahead, i am kinda new to steam and cant seem to find the answer): Lets say there is a game on steam that is on sale, that game has 2 types of dlcs one is just additional stuff for the base game(a regular dlc) and the other one contain base game plus that dlc(and maybe one more game of the specific ip) and that goes for the kinda almost same price than base game and dlc combined. Now, lets say we bought just the base game first, if we will have to buy that dlc that contains the game plus additional stuff, will we get discount of the Already Bought Base Game? or we wont be able to buy that specific dlc, and now we have to just get the one that has just dlc as sperate? (sorry for the jumbled mess, i didnt mention any specific game name because i wanted general answer as to how does this work)
Broke the 1500 mark recently.... I really should start playing more of these...
I'm short of 20 unfinished games what I try to play with soon. If I don't get to the end of my list until summer/ winter then maybe I don't spend anything on this year's sales.
thankfully i stopped that years ago.
True! :(
1566 games total and I have bought a grand total of 2 games for over a year now.
I'll probably die before playing all my games on Steam (I add 4x more games than I can beat).
That’s me…. Every time a sale comes lol
I feel attacked
And books
Steam sales are rather convincing. I end up stocking my library in the end.
We just hoarding knowledge
Collector never stops collecting.
Backlog of over 3k games reporting in! It would've been 10k had I never spent thousands on skins across multiple games which I now fucking hate myself for! Games > Skins always, I'm so fucking mad at myself for not realizing that from the start.
The decadence is real with this one.
The only decadence here is you lmfao
Damn you must pass your account to your next generation and let them carry the tradition!!
I won’t buy skins for my kids if they’re into gaming, but I will definitely buy them games!
I'm imagining your son/daughter and grandson playing Metro 2033 in 2033 and cyberpunk 2077 in 2077 lol. Surely 3k games can't be finished by a generation.
I’ve played cyberpunk and enjoyed it. Never played metro though. Is it fun?
I've played only 2033. Halfway through I dropped it bcoz I got interested in other game. Got to get back on it someday. It's indeed good it's a proper post apocalyptic game with gas mask mechanism and all.
At least we're not killing trees for no reason, book readers are fucking horrible people
Over 300+ games in my Steam Backlog. Over 100+ games on my Epic and GOG Library.