The article glosses over what I'd have to believe is the biggest reason - some games, in particular older AAA games, are discounted so aggressively that it seems silly to not purchase. Like 5-15% of the original retail price.

One stat in here supports a third, slightly different statement. The median player has not played 51% of their games, so: "most people who buy games on steam have not played most of the games they own."

I don't know why but I find language like this incredibly frustrating. Maybe it's because the media tends to do this sort of thing all the time to fit statistics to their narrative.

Time is the biggest cost of gaming.

I’m in this category. I have two tiers of games on my wishlist. Those that if they are less than $20 I would buy and those that if they are less than $3 I would buy.

It’s not automatic, sometimes I just don’t feel like buying a game anymore even when it’s on sale, and I’ll drop them when if they go on sale and I don’t want them enough to pay.

But I do end up with a few games in my library I haven’t played yet.

I re-read your comment 5 times and I still don't see the difference you're trying to highlight.

What I got is: people buy games and they don't play most of them. Is it wrong?

the original title is "Most people who buy your game won’t play it", which is actually equivalent to what you're saying (even though it still says 'most people'!). HN mods edit titles to avoid clickbait and the like, which can end up like this

Which can be perfectly rational even financially when discounts are >50%.

It amazes me that the community still tolerates the sloppy butcher that is the automated HN headline editor. An absolute embarrassment is what it is.

+1 complain for the editoralized title. It's so much worse than the original.

Am i the only one who couldn't care less about these semantics and doesn't get what the heck you're even talking about?

- buying a bundle of 12 games to get the two games you actually want to play

- donating to a charity event that gives you games

I've got games that I intend to play later, and they were cheap enough that I don't think I'll save any more by waiting. I do intend to play Mad Max at some point - $5 was too much for me to add it to my library. $2.50? Fine... pulled the trigger with 9 other items I plan to do. The thing with steam is once you have them in your library, they remain. Some items are not sold anymore, however.

Looking at my queue over 20 years... likely hording. Nuts. One of the gotchas I bumped into was I really need a larger disk for games. Some of the newer stuff takes an enormous amount of space, which means it waits and waits.

Also collections. I almost finished Tomb Raider II.

Putting a product on sale is amoral because somebody might buy something they don't need, is weirdest take I have seen in a while. We're not all just whales, some people don't have that much money. Plenty of teenagers, unemployed, etc. are able to get some good experiences because of good sales.

The real reason cracktorio can do no sale is the same reason Minecrack can be basically no sale (same price forever) - it’s an evergreen game people will always buy at a low roar.

Most games are like DVDs or books, they frontload 90% of their total revenue in the first few months, and so sales are a way to squeeze a bit more juice out later.

The reason factorio devs can take such a stance is that they crowd financed the game over a decade ago when doing that was viable, and since then the game has achieved cult status. Sure the game was officially released in 2020, but it had been in Early Access since 2016.

Ironically I bought it and never played it. I only bought it because I played a clone of the game called "Dyson's Sphere" made by a Chinese developer and wondered what the original game was like.

> The developer profits from the players FOMO when a sale happens.

No, That isn't it at all.

This is like super backwards. FOMO happens typically when a big game is released. No months/years afterwards.

A lot of players are waiting for a game to be the right price. Triple-A titles are now £60+. Doom the Dark Ages was over £70 at launch that is without the extra micro-transaction nonsense. Some games (even indie games) come out at £25-30. I am a big Doom fan and play megawads such as Eviternity and I said to myself "No I am not paying that much" for the new Doom game. I have plenty of disposable income.

If the game comes down to less than £15 that is 3-4 overpriced coffee / 3-4 pints of beer down the bar.

If you are patient you know that the game is going to go on sale some time in the future so you wait until their is a sale. Steam even have mid-week deals. I hear/see these conversations all the time on Discord, in person, reddit etc.

> The player thinks he has accumulated a glorious Steam library when in reality he just wasted tons of money on games he wouldn’t even ever launch.

I've never heard anyone flex their Steam Library. I don't think anyone thinks of it this way. Achievements in a particular game, sure.

> these techniques benefit the developer not the player

Hard disagree. Buying games on sales is a magnificent way I can expand my horizons and play random games I'd have never heard of otherwise or would've never tried.

This is like Michael Phelps giving swimming advice. Interesting to listen to for sure, but not really applicable to the vast majority of people.

I waited for Elden Ring to be on sale because I wasn't sure if I will like it, and 2 hours is not enough to try a game like this. No other reason.

Lot's of people buy on sale because it's too expensive for them otherwise. Factorios sales model does mean lost sales, they have just decided that it is okay for them. Game is DRM free, can be pirated with no problems if you can't afford it.

The point of sales is that you sell the game to people who think the game is worth full price at full price and those who have less money or think the game is worth less to them at the price they would rather pay.

It's basically a reverse auction process, where the bids start high and get lower over time.

The KSP1 DLC is basically never worth it at full price to me.

I don't know.. maybe if you cannot control your impulses..

For me Steam sales are great. I have things in the wish list and when the sale is good I might buy it. I always check if it's a good sale on SteamDB.

I usually play these games but most of the time not for long. That's why I don't want to put in the full price.

> these techniques benefit the developer not the player

And when every dev is doing that it hardly benefits the devs either.

Seems like basic price discrimination. Occasional sales let you capture some of the people for whom your game (or the option to play your game, maybe never exercised...) is worth $10 instead of $20 (or whatever). I don't really see who is harmed here, other than players who say "well maybe the game will go on sale..." -- but did they really value the game at its sticker price to begin with?

My Thursday morning habit is to download the free games from Epic and Prime Gaming. I have hundreds of games I paid nothing for and will probably never play, but every once in a while I’ll read about an older game, find I have it in my library from one of these giveaways and can enjoy it. When I had PS+ or GamePass I did the same thing. I’ve had less success with Steam, but used to do the same thing with HB. I’m sure there are many others doing the same thing which skews the results.

That and sales, especially the old ones with dailies, you'd see a game at 90% off and you'd go "uh that looks fine I can swing $2 for it" but might never actually get around to playing it.

I am in the same position, except I have had a humble bundle subscription from the very beginning.

Of games I have specifically paid money for, I believe I have played 100% of them.

It's probably the wrong interpretation to say a lot of people are making the decision to buy an individual game and then not playing it. Although I know people who do that, even with physical boardgames, they usually have the intention to play but life gets in the way.

That's a completely different scenario to myself where they just accumulate without me noticing. A number of times I have read a retrospective of a game and wondered if I owned a copy already. I usually get around a 50% hit rate on those.

Yeah, that's probably my biggest culprit too. I'm guilty of getting something and then not playing it, but I'd say over half is due to humble bundles.

Same. My library is probably >70% unplayed because of that, but in terms of money spent I’d say the number becomes <10%. And in general people are more likely to impulse buy on discount, especially deep discount. So I won’t count on making most of the revenue from unplayed sales (plus the provided stat is average 32.7% unplayed, median 51.7% unplayed, that’s not “most” anyway).

Just to clarify, I have the same usage and it's because I "pirate" games and only buy the ones that I play more than once/couple hours.

I don't trust and nor like the refund policies/processes and all kinds of fences they implement, and often even after I have bought a game I will keep using the pirated version because it is more convenient (offline play, no need to login and it's already installed... when games are 100-150GB sometimes it's a waste of time to reinstall using Steam). Do you have another kind of usage that leads to these false positive?

Some cultures even have a word for it, like the Japanese; Tsundoku [0]

Buying the tools are a step to step to fulfillment. It is easier to buy the step to fulfillment then walk the path.

Then again, some books are one offs and only used for a small portion, not full consumption.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-44981013

The urge to collect, it’s not our best one.

Yeah, the same is true for board games. The average number of times a board game is played is < 1.

The problem is that I could recommend a hundred wildly different games that you might like, but playing a hundred games just to figure out which one is right for you doesn't sound like a good use of your time. Can you give more information? You like single-player games? Classic card games like solitaire (rec: Zachtronics Solitaire Collection)? Postmodern card games (rec: Balatro)? Deckbuilding roguelikes (rec: Slay The Spire)? Actual roguelikes (rec: Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup)? Postmodern roguelikes (rec: Caves of Qud)? There's so much out there, even the cream of the crop is overwhelming to a newcomer. If you're a programmer, maybe look at the best games from Zachtronics (Spacechem, Opus Magnum, Shenzhen I/O, TIS-100, Last Call BBS... they're all pretty good).

Hands down one of the best games I have ever played was Subnautica and I highly recommend it without knowing your preferences.

It’s a deep sea exploration / builder with a story that gets crazier and crazier.

It’s also very approachable and mostly easy to play.

It's hard to recommend games when you don't have a baseline taste. The past couple of years having a demo became very common on Steam, so I suggest trying some demos.

You've played a 2D platformer and a multiplayer shooter, two very popular genres with massive offerings. If you're interested in more along the same lines, just off the top of my head I'll say try Hollow Knight as a 2D platformer, and Overwatch 2 as a multiplayer shooter (this one is free). Overwatch 2 may be overwhelming for someone new to gaming.

There is a genre called cozy games for more relaxed experiences, like Journey. There are also turn-based roguelikes, and for those I would recommend Balatro.

I don't know about Ubuntu or Linux compatbility so look into that, but I know Steam's OS and Proton have made massive strides.

I'm gonna recommend Final Fantasy VI. The FF games generally aren't sequels to each other (the ones that are have titles like Final Fantasy X-2) and FF6, while on the older side, is not only very beginner-friendly, but also has quite good writing.

So-called JRPGs (Japanese Role-Playing Games) tend to offer decent bang-for-buck and are generally more controller-friendly than CRPGs (Computer Role-Playing Games). Besides the Final Fantasy games you could also check out the Persona series.

There are still a HUGE number of games you can play with Intel integrated graphics all of which are extremely good. Many of the greatest games of all time are quite old or 2D which means you don't need anything special to run them. At most I'd invest in a controller (both Xbox & PS5 controllers are compatible) but you don't even need that to play almost all games on Steam. Some cheap but great games: Hollow Knight, Celeste, Hades, Outer Wilds, Undertale, Rimworld.

I wouldn't buy a joystick if you're into Flight sims. I'd look into a Hotas setup or a virtual reality setup where the whole cockpit is simulated (VTOL VR).

I started out on Microsoft Flight Simulator back in 99-2000. I feel like that was the peak joystick purchase era.

Get a monitor with a good refresh rate, get a good gaming keyboard and mouse, potentially look into mechanical keyboards if you watch some videos and find it interesting.

Watch some YouTube PC gaming channels.

Also there's SO many games you're right it is overwhelming.

You could easily go ten years back. And buy the top ten games on some gaming site rank list.

Obligatory mentions: - Red Dead Redemption 2 - The Last of Us - BioShock Infinite - The Witcher 3 - City Skylines (Sims City like)

Really depends on what category of game you like. Highly highly subjective thing these days.

You can almost make friends by aligning on the types of games you like because it's a bit of a personality litmus test.

I'd imagine a lot of people in HackerNews play Factorio quite seriously.

Can't go wrong with Portal, although I had to look up a walkthrough from time to time in order to get past a puzzle, especially the end puzzle. I think it should play pretty well for you on Ubuntu and be a lot of fun.

Portal 2 is even better than the first one, but play them both.

You might want to try out the Steam Deck - https://store.steampowered.com/steamdeck

You might like story driven games, like Read Dead Redemption 2, Witcher 3, Mass Effect... all on sale on Steam currently.

You can also install emulators on the Steam Deck, so you can play those games before you started your working life.

Otherwise look into how to install Valve's Proton on Ubuntu to play the games available on Steam.

Alternatively get yourself a cheap PS4 pro on eBay, which usually come with plenty of games bundled. Don't need the latest and greatest console. PS4 still has a huge library of games and you can get those cheap on eBay too.

It depends on what games you like.

One game that I recommend to anyone is Firewatch. It's a beautiful, linear story game with easy to understand mechanics. And it only lasts a few hours, so it's a small time investment.

I can also recommend Outer Wilds. It's a puzzle story game. It gives you a lot of freedom, with the downside that it's somewhat easier to get stuck. For this game you should buy a gamepad.

If you like single player shooters, I recommend Half-Life 2.

Hope this helps!

PS. As for peripherals, a keyboard+mouse should be plenty. Some vehicle driven games require a gamepad to play comfortably.

As for a GPU, the games I mentioned here will run on anything semi-modern. No need to buy something brand new.

There isn't really a good way to recommend a game to someone who's never played a game before - preferences regarding immersion, complex mechanics, turn-based vs live-action, etc. vary wildly. Someone who likes Europa Universalis 4 frequently does not like Assassin's Creed Valhalla, and vice versa. With these constraints I would probably recommend Cyberpunk 2077 (no gamepad), and if you decide you like live-action, Hades, and if you don't, Slay the Spire.

Regarding gamepads: you can use the xbox/playstation ones with your computer. Bluetooth is hit or miss for me (windows), but they both work really well with a USB cable. Its subjective of course, but the console manufacturers do a pretty good job with comfort and quality.

If you liked Doom, it might be fun to play through some of the newer doom games like Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal and see how they've evolved over the years.

Thanks everyone for the recos.

I asked chatgpt to summarize the conversation, and this is what it came up with.

https://chatgpt.com/share/68752971-9e78-8012-bb83-5586a81d4d...

Literally thousands?? A 40-hour work week for a year is ~2000 hours. Out of curiosity, what's your rough 'playing schedule'?

I think this is the real reason for the metric, browsing steams sales and scooping deals for later, I wonder what the numbers would be if they compared playtime with full price purchase or purchase made not during major store-wide sales.

The longer you wait the cheaper they will be because of the age.

It is "gear acquisition syndrome". It refers to all guitar related equipment, actually I'd say that it refers to pedals much more than guitars.

Very different.

With a physical item you can always sell it or give it away.

Instruments in particular can hold value extremely well.

Also, just having the guitar as a decoration can look nice.

There's a reason most guitar manufacturers put a lot of effort into aesthetics.

I don't know if it still requires elevated privileges because I've played it on Linux, but if you used the Seamless Coop mod it disables EAC and uses the Steam API for multiplayer, so presumably won't require admin privileges. There's also er-patcher which I use to "fix" the framerate and comes with an option to disable EAC (and a few other nice features IMO).

There are mods to disable online play and anti-cheat with it.

I find for physical objects, I’m much more likely to actually use them. I have read 95+% of the physical books in my house, wear 90+% of my clothes in any given year, 95+% of the food I buy. Mainly because I’m physically limited to buying/owning a certain number of things before I run out of space. With a 150TB NAS and at least 4TB of local storage in each of my PCs (and the fact you don’t even need to download a game to buy it), it’s a lot easier to hoard digital items without using them.

Physical books (and games) sit there on a shelf and you're occasionally remind you that you bought them and maybe should read/play them.

Items in a digital library seem much easier to completely and utterly forget about.

I'll bet kitchen tools are big on this. How many people buy a specialized appliance like a bread maker and then use it once or never at all? If you don't use something regularly, it's easy for it to end up tucked away in a cabinet where you never think of it again.

eBooks and audiobooks are even worse than paper books in that regard. Environmentally much better though!

I just checked and I have 300+, yet from checking purchase history I haven't really spent that much on Steam at all. Apart from Cyberpunk I never paid much for anything.

As others have mentioned, for me it's also mostly Humble Bundle promos, paying small amounts that were just donations. Maybe once or twice there was a game I wanted.

I haven't opened it in 5 years though. I always toy with giving it away or deleting it.

>I use a tracker to try and fight this, showing how many games I've started and also achievement progress in them in aggregate.

I've tried something similar before and it worked, for a while, but I started feeling the free time I spent gaming at best felt like a chore and at worst like a job. Nowadays I just play what I feel like and don't really bother much with completing games or not, because realistically I never will finish my backlog.

> But I also buy a lot of books I intend to read later, so I almost think it's inherent to digital copies?

Nah, it also occurs plenty with physical copies. Look up tsundoku.

What tracker? I need something like this, I've around 1600 games on steam and need a way to keep track.

People who buy a game and don't play it, usually don't download it either. And many cheap games don't have huge downloads either.

Yeah, I used to do bundles like the Humble Indie Bundle back in the day, but most of those games just became unplayed entries in my steam library. These days I'm a lot choosier about games I buy - it has to be either a game I plan to play right away, or a game I'm certain I'm going to play later and is on sale. Otherwise, I have too many unplayed games to keep dropping money on more.

It’s still worth buying physical books that sound interesting to you even if you don’t read them, because then you can have an impressive shelf of books in your home that you might read someday, or someone else might want to read from.

With these steam games? No physical copy means you’re just throwing money away.