37% Of Steam Games Have Never Been Loaded

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While this statistic may seem a bit high, if you are a fan of Steam sales, you are probably surprised the number isn't higher. I buy lots of stuff on sale that I know I won't have a chance to play but, like most of you, I'll be damned if I'm going to miss out on a deal. :D

The “owned but unplayed” phenomenon is an extremely widespread issue across Steam according to our data. It shows up most frequently in games included in bundles, offered at heavily reduced prices, or simply given away to players who have yet to actually play them. It’s not limited to those games, though; in fact, out of the roughly 781 million games registered to Steam accounts, our data shows only 493 million, or 63 percent, have been played even once.
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I'm surprised its that low...I know I haven't played 90% of the games in my library.
 
Steam sales, Humble Bundle, etc. get me. I fall victim to that consumer trick. Give me a good enough deal, and I'll buy it even if I don't need or want it. I have a huge backlog. But, on the bright side, I have played a few games and found some that I never would have sought out because of those sales. Great games, flying under the radar.
 
With the amount of "pay $3 and get these 12 games" type deals that are going on, it's not terribly surprising that over 1/3 have never been played.
 
Half of the games in my library are not installed, and the rest I have never finished. They've been played somewhere between 10 minutes and 2 hours.
 
I have plenty of games I haven't touched in steam, including Civ4 (I played it pre-steam, but never in steam) Witcher I & II, Fallout New Vegas, Dead Space (free game code, would never have bought this) etc. etc.
 
Ur_Mom said:
Steam sales, Humble Bundle, etc. get me. I fall victim to that consumer trick. Give me a good enough deal, and I'll buy it even if I don't need or want it. I have a huge backlog. But, on the bright side, I have played a few games and found some that I never would have sought out because of those sales. Great games, flying under the radar.
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Agreed. I've bought bundles with specific intent and then discovered something else in the bundle was awesome. One of the Squenix bundles forever ago netted me Just Cause 2 and that became about 130hrs of pure joyous mayhem. I think I bought that bundle intending to play The Last Remnant and have only played a couple hours of it.
 
This bag is too expensive at $400, OH LOOK 50% SALE FOR A BAG THAT'S $800!!

Shopper logic. Applies to men and women. If there's a sale, it's a must buy regardless if we need it or not.
 
Pretty convincing evidence we need more free time.

:p
 
Bundles, $2 and $3 offers, replacing games I own physical discs with digital copies, etc ... I suspect mine is much higher than that percentage :eek:
 
MrGoodbar said:
This bag is too expensive at $400, OH LOOK 50% SALE FOR A BAG THAT'S $800!!

Shopper logic. Applies to men and women. If there's a sale, it's a must buy regardless if we need it or not.
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Except this is Steam ... it goes more like "I could buy the 5 games I want for $30 or I could buy the publisher pack that contains the 5 I want, plus 20 more, for $50" ... sometimes that deal makes sense :cool:
 
According to the pie chart at the bottom.. 53.9% of the games on steam have been played less than 1 hour..

Astounding!
 
I have purchased three games from Steam. All three were downloaded, installed, and played briefly, but upon reinstallation of my OS for other reasons, they weren't worth reinstalling.
 
Can't say I can match that statistic. My favorite "game" on Steam for a while now has been buying games and never installing them. It's a collector thing or an expression of gamers rot.
 
I was pretty good about keeping up with what I get... but over time that backlog just keeps getting bigger.
 
my library is mostly humble bundles and for $5 here $7 there, I don't really care if I ever play them. I have maybe 170 games and Im sure I have less that $400 invested.
 
yup. that's why last sale I limited myself and next sale I probably won't buy anything. it just got too ridiculous :)
 
MrGoodbar said:
This bag is too expensive at $400, OH LOOK 50% SALE FOR A BAG THAT'S $800!!

Shopper logic. Applies to men and women. If there's a sale, it's a must buy regardless if we need it or not.
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Internet price trackers can now at least verify if it really is a sale though, so you know if it actually DID sell for $800 for a couple years, and just dropped in price.
 
I never buy game i don't intend to play, unless that game is in some sort of bundle with other games that i won't play.
 
seems..so low.. I would have guessed at least 60% of the games bought on steam wasn't played once....

*looks at backlog... hmm.. maybe even 70% of the games haven't been played lol.
 
I always keep a healthy buffer of games in my library, they usually get bought during my off-time while they're on sale and I get around to playing them when I get the free time. That, plus humble-bundles and gifts from friends, leaves a surplus of games floating around.
 
For a while they were tossing in things like the older Half-Life DLC's and spin-offs with all of the newer HL2 games. I know I've never bothered with most of them...or if I did, I did it back before Steam existed.
 
I currently have close to 400 games on steam and I have yet to play 80% of them. I have them all installed on one of my 4TB RAID 1 arrays on my gaming rig. I keep buying them because they are a good deal, but I rarely get the time to play.

Having said all that, when I do get time to play, I like the fact that I have a huge number of options at my disposal and can play whatever my mood dictates. I only buy games now at full price if I know I am going to play them right away. Last two games I paid full price for were Skyrim and Rome II Total War. Both where actually pre-orders.
 
Similar thing for me. I buy tons of games on sale. There are a handful that I haven't touched, but I've at least sampled most of the ones that I bought on a whim to at least decided if I will eventually get to it. For a couple $ at a time, it's a better deal than when I used to buy magazines with disks (or discs) on them to try a game out. And then I still have it sitting there for a rainy day.

Then the rest of the games I buy I know 100% that I will play, but get them cheaply. Then once again, when I'm hurting for something to play, BAM I have three or four games I've never played just waiting to go. I'd say I finish about 40% of the games I play. Another 10-15% I play more than if I had finished them by just messing around in them (like Elder Scrolls games.) The rest get played until I either lose interest, or something better comes along.
 
Guilty as charged.

What is worse, I just built a new gaming rig and it will be mostly used to browse [H] - 4770k & SLI 780Ti KPE's...
 
I usually only finish the games I paid full price for, while the ones I get on sale are never installed. That's a weird dynamic. I guess if I'm willing to pay full price that means it's a game that has my full interest and is worth my time to play.
 
I looked on my profile page and I don't think Ars' analysis on whether a game has been loaded or not is sound. There are several games on my steam profile page which don't list any kind of activity even though I had played those games, sometimes multiple hours. Part of the problem is that Steam has only been tracking play time for the last few years and Steam is over 10 years old. Examples from my profile:
Left 4 Dead 2.5 hrs on record - I wasted a lot more time than that on L4D, it was fun.
Counter-Strike: Source (page shows it hasn't been played) - ditto, but got bored eventually

37% is way too high of an estimate, but it wouldn't surprise me if the number is between 10 and 20%.
 
Yep, the comments have an update from the author that the unplayed stats are likely wrong:

Kyle OrlandSenior Gaming Editor about 18 hours ago
Wankie said:
The unplayed stats are basically wrong because until roughly 2010-2011 Steam didn't track or never accurately tracked game play time especially for the first 7 or so years of its existence. So games older than 2009 will have completely wrong or non existent data. And even games released past that time on steam such Deus Ex Invisible War don't work at all for game play stats. That's why HL2: Lost Coast looks so low, everyone already played it BEFORE stats were being tracked.
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Thanks for the note. I was not aware of this when collecting this data, but it appears that play time before March 2009 was indeed untracked. I've updated the piece noting this important caveat for older games
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mastaBlasta said:
More evidence why it needs to move to a subscription model.
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Incorrect information is "evidence"? :p

Plus OnLive and GameTap suggest the subscription model is only a model in failure. Gabe knows where his cheeseburgers come from.
 
I'm about 75% not loaded. But im just going through the games. I just bought Assassins Creed 3 for 5 bucks on amazon and could not pass it but, but know I won't play it for about a month at least.
 
Yakk said:
Pretty convincing evidence we need more free time.

:p
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Amen to that.

Let me look at my own library. 383 games. Of those, I've played 184 at least once. I've played ~30 to completion. The vast majority of my play time has been contributed to TF2, where I have logged almost 900 hours.

I just like to go back to my favorite games . . . for years. I've played through the Half-life series several times, including Portals 1 and 2, and I'll do that again once VR comes to market.

I'd say of the 184 games I've played at least once, many were for about 10 minutes and then I decided they weren't that compelling. Maybe I'll play them someday, but odds are I won't.
 
I have loaded probably around 15% of the games in my library. I have a hard time putting a good game down when I find it.
 
I stopped running steam since I barely get time to play and whenever I see sales they usually get me to buy something I will never play. As it stands I have over 100 games I have yet to play on steam. I probably will never get around to playing them either.
 
Guilty as charged for the most part. Between GoG and Steam I'm nearing 400 games.
I've bought games as part of bundles, getting a game I wanted at discount plus 3-8 more I've no intention to ever play.
I've snagged digital Steam copies of old games I've played and beat already that I enjoyed and will someday play again or owned on console at one point in time before my crackhead brother looted my games because its easier than digging through the boxes of old games I've got stacked in the basement (I need a "Nerd Cave" for that stuff). That alone probably accounts for over a third of my unplayed games.
I've bought games that have Linux ports just to support the developers I really can't play because my Linux laptop sucks for games (but I like to use it for web surfing and writing documents).
I've bought Indy games to support developers that I've enjoyed the demo or the full game at a friend's house but never really got around to playing myself.

Part of my problem is with games like Skyrim and Oblivion, they're too damn engrossing. I just keep downloading more mods for them at Nexus and keep playing them even though I just bought new games....
 
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