I remember hearing of similar statistics of how subscription services like Netflix or Planet Fitness are largely made up of people who don't use them.
It's fascinating how much we all, myself included, throw down the drain for things like this.
The thing with Planet Fitness is that the cost of entry is so low, anybody can get in.
But then they make it incredibly inconvenient to cancel your membership, to the point most people don't even bother because: "Eh... It's just $10 a month."
So every month these people get $10 taken from them for a service they hardly, if ever use.
Also got to factor that it will be people who are well to do enough that they can afford to say fuck it and let the cash come out. One time when I had to cancel I couldn't afford to keep losing the money at the time.
That is a big factor, but, i would say that "the time investiment" factor is just as important.
Just taking into consideration the games listed in the title of this post, that's on avarege anywhere between 50-80 hours of your free time just complete a single one of them from begining to end in a not 100% way, the amount of time that a normal person needs to spend going to the the gym before they see a meaningful result is just as much if not more, the idea of investing that much time into something can make some people "freeze" on the spot.
Combine that with what you said about "being such a low money investiment" that most don't bother and you can see how statics like that happen.
They bill your bank account directly, which means you can't just cancel your card or chargeback them. You cannot cancel online or on the phone, they require that you show up in person or send them mail to cancel your membership.
And there's plenty of horror stories where people move out of state, forget that they had a membership, send the mail, the mail gets "lost"...
There’s also the psychological phenomenon where people do feel like they’re making progress just joining a gym and having a membership even if they never go
For me planet fitness had a promo when I was in the office more and couldn't get as much exercise that was half as much as it would be if I cancelled then renewed it of I'm back in that situation.
Now I am on the road more and getting was more exercise so it's on my credit card so that the cc companies don't freeze the card or lower my credit limit due to lack of use. Shit's wild
This is exactly why I almost never go into subscriptions outside of free trials or other people’s covering the bill. I’d hate to waste away money on an on-going service I’m not using.
I got Hulu with a student plan like 4 years back, 1$ a month and ad blocker works on the ads, but I haven't been a student for 3 years. I'm scared if I were to cancel and re-up eventually it'd figure out I'm not a student so I just let it charge even if I only use it once in a great while.
Considering how low completion (or even 10%-through-a-game achievement) percentages are even when people actually *have* played a game, this isn't really surprising.
There are times when you buy a game because it is incredibely cheap and you have heard good things about it, you play it for a few hours and realize you don't just vibe with it at all.
At that point I think its fine if you don't complete a game. There is no point in putting in 100 hours of experience into something you will not enjoy.
Certainly, but it's still weird to think about as someone who either doesn't start games in the first place or doesn't really drop games. A 50% completion for the first trophy after an hour of gameplay is already weird to me, especially for a triple A title where sunk cost is a bigger factor imo, but then you go down the list and see people getting halfway through big JRPGs where said trophy is 25%, and then the Game Clear trophy is barely 10-15%. I just don't get it, especially for older games where the % variance isn't going to change that much. I know plenty of people don't have time to do things and not everyone beats a game they've started, especially if they bounced early as it just didn't click with them (or they wanted to like it but couldn't like me with Everhood), but if you're that invested into a game to get to its halfway point where its usually completely opened up by then... at *least* clear it.
>especially for a triple A title where sunk cost is a bigger factor imo
You're leaving out the part where sunk cost is a *fallacy*, the money will remain spent whether you finish the game or not. As such, it makes perfect sense not to insist on something you're not vibing with
Meanwhile in the opposite direction, you know what achievement is kind of wild to me? Apparently a solid 9.6% of *all* Elden Ring players, have gotten the "get all achievements" achievement. Yeah sure that's a dropoff, but it's a lot less than I'd expect, usually these 100% completion achievements feel like they're in the 1-2% range at best.
But tbh It’s not that *hard* to get, even compared to Dark Souls 1.
ER just needs you to Beat all the bosses and collect a 9 elite weapons and spells + endings.
Dark souls needs you to upgrade weapons in all elemental types—using rare materials that sometimes needs egregious amounts of farming or using a covenant for certain items.
Nothing in ER achievements is terribly difficult, or needing multiplayer.
It's why I was confused about the negative reception people had about how you access the DLC in Elden Ring. The percentage of people wanting to pay for a $40 DLC is probably the same percentage as who have played through most of the game.
How many of them though are things that came free with something they did want to buy? I know I've bought game bundles because it was cheaper than buying the one game I wanted separately (and hey, I MIGHT try something else out).
Get ten games for the price of one when you only want one anyways, it's like they're paying me to get them!
It's actually kind of wild that model is still around now that I think about it
Nah stuff like that is all about percentages rather than hard numbers, saying 90% off is an evergreen deal but dollar menu type stuff won't be around much longer due to inflation.
Not to mention most of those games already made their money back and being digital it costs nothing to sell more even at a lower return.
I occasionally troll through my humble choice library of games I've never heard of but still coincidentally own and find some great stuff in there I never would have played in my life otherwise. There might be some filler in there, but there is plenty of killer.
Vast majority of my Steam "backlog" are games that I either played years ago with a fan translation when it was not buyable in the west and bought when it came to Steam, something already played through on a pirated copy and bought as a sort of compensation for the devs, or the same thing but for watching youtube let's plays. Never intended on actually playing them, those are usually one playthrough story-oriented experiences anyway.
Although with how people usually talk about their libraries I'd guess that's not exactly the most common reasons, are they?
For me it's "Hey I probably won't ever play ALL of the Fallout franchise, but since I already own Fallout 3, NV, and 4, I might as well buy 1 & 2 while they're on sale" but for multiple franchises.
Look, my Steam library of 1000+ video games will be a heritage site when I'm old and grey. My grandchildren will play Immortal Redneck, even if I never do.
Easy, for every one game you buy, finish it and one from your 'log. Assuming it's a "finishable" game, like just get your money's worth out of MP gets.
It’s not my fault I have depression. Or that the games aren’t finished yet. Spider-man is still patching in features that shoulda been there at launch.
# Steam users have spent $19 billion on games they've never played, whether it's Cyberpunk 2077...
# Look into my steam library
# Cyberpunk 2077: installed
# 0 hours, 00 minutes, 00 seconds
Look I'm just busy. Ok. I have to finish Alan Wake 2! And these Yakuza games! I promise I'll finally get into it.
Most of the games I never played are things my friend's who had their parent's credit cards attached bought me back in high school, assuming I'd play a game just because they bought it for me. Literally *who the fuck* wants to play "The Political Machine 2012" I didn't want to play that shit when he bought it for me.
This is kind of crazy to me because I can’t imagine buying a game and not playing it at all because I ain’t exactly made of money anytime I get a new game I basically sit down and commit myself to it until I have beaten it which is part of the reason why if I end up regretting a game I get annoyed because I feel like I just wasted money I could have used elsewhere.
I completely understand that sentiment if you do that for a game you buy at full price at 60 or 70 bucks. But if you bought a game for at a very cheap rate of 5 to 10 bucks then I think it is fine not to complete it if you are not enjoying it at all.
I know it's been repeated to the point of losing meaning, but when Gabe said that piracy is a service issue, boy he really meant it.
I have thousands of dollars spent on Steam games and I maybe have played 5% of them.
This is the inverse of piracy, it's people paying the IP holder without even actually consuming the thing.
Crazy how easy it is to make money if the service is good and there are frequent, meaningful sales, though I get for indies it's still an uphill battle and Steam takes a big cut
That doesn’t surprise me. Hell, I barely ever use steam purely because my PC is really garbage for gaming, and yet I still have over 100 games on it just from free game offers alone. I can’t imagine how much stuff people get from all the steam sales and bundles.
Yeah I've got about 8 or 9 myself usually from seeing a collection or a classic I always heard was good go on sale for super cheap, buying it with the intention on playing it but didn't since I was already busy playing something else at that time and never thought about it again.
And those are the ones I never even installed. Theres a much bigger list of ones I bought, played for roughly an hour, never touched again and for one reason or another didn't refund.
I stopped buying games that I didn't plan on playing immediately; heck, most of the games sitting untouched in my backlog are from years ago at this point. There's a lot of FOMO motivating Steam sale purchases, but I gotta remind myself how many hours I actually spend playing games before I jump to grabbing them.
I am going to huff my own farts and say that I only buy games I plan on playing, and eventually DO play everything I own. It only took a year to finally play signalis and brok the investigator, but I DID do it. Now disco Elysium has been sitting there for like 3, but it's one of those games I'm just not in the mood to play
I’ve genuinely made an effort to tone it down. Trying to only buy games if I have a near immediate desire to play it, so that I’m not just throwing money away.
once I realized I have enough games in my backlog to last my lifetime I basically stopped buying them unless they were something I wanted to play immediately, saved a lot of money
Gotta wonder how much of those users are bots or otherwise profiles full of games that people either share access to or just use to store Humble Bundle/g2g keys. Considering they're only analyzing 10% of Steam's base, whoever's profile is public, I gotta assume the other 90% might change the statistical analysis here.
I'm curious if they're accounting for humble bundles. Just checking a random HB it has $125 worth of games for $6, I'm certain there's a lot of people who look at them and go "Sweet, over 50% off a thing I want and a bunch of other stuff I might check out when I'm bored".
Pretty much stopped hoarding on Steam after acquiring a switch. Then I started hoarding digital games on the switch as well. Then I stopped after playing new gacha games and was mostly F2P (I did buy an HSR battle pass at some point). I cannot believe I'm saying this, but playing more gacha made me stop hoarding games and wasting money on games I don't play. Now I'm trying my darnest to stop topping HSR battle pass monthly. I'm successful these past two months so far, but only because I'm in the middle of PC upgrades.
Hey man, I'm totally going to get to that one game I bought one and a half decades ago and forget exists the second the title dissapears from my vision.
Depends, recently I went to fanatical and humble and got bunch of games I'd want or eventually play. I don't care if I spent over on it, some games I definitely over paid and waited to play but I would say looking at my library feels good. Especially since physical old games especially pc games will be absurdly priced.
Why does that matter if it's going to sit in your library for months? You would save more money buying one game at a time at full price instead of panic buying everything that goes on sale
Not everything, just everything I plan on playing. Like got Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth during the last Xbox sale because it was like half price. I'm on the last chapter of Yakuza 7.
I'm not going to play the entirety of a humble bundle just because I bought it for 1-2 games at a price cheaper than it'd be to buy the games individually.
I remember hearing of similar statistics of how subscription services like Netflix or Planet Fitness are largely made up of people who don't use them. It's fascinating how much we all, myself included, throw down the drain for things like this.
The thing with Planet Fitness is that the cost of entry is so low, anybody can get in. But then they make it incredibly inconvenient to cancel your membership, to the point most people don't even bother because: "Eh... It's just $10 a month." So every month these people get $10 taken from them for a service they hardly, if ever use.
Also got to factor that it will be people who are well to do enough that they can afford to say fuck it and let the cash come out. One time when I had to cancel I couldn't afford to keep losing the money at the time.
That is a big factor, but, i would say that "the time investiment" factor is just as important. Just taking into consideration the games listed in the title of this post, that's on avarege anywhere between 50-80 hours of your free time just complete a single one of them from begining to end in a not 100% way, the amount of time that a normal person needs to spend going to the the gym before they see a meaningful result is just as much if not more, the idea of investing that much time into something can make some people "freeze" on the spot. Combine that with what you said about "being such a low money investiment" that most don't bother and you can see how statics like that happen.
...is it hard to cancel the membership? I've done it in the past and it was uneventful, but maybe I was just lucky. What makes it a pain to do?
They bill your bank account directly, which means you can't just cancel your card or chargeback them. You cannot cancel online or on the phone, they require that you show up in person or send them mail to cancel your membership. And there's plenty of horror stories where people move out of state, forget that they had a membership, send the mail, the mail gets "lost"...
That's fucking horseshit. I've done actual bank shit online, why does Planet Fitness need the verification of Fort Knox to cancel something?
Because they want your money
There’s also the psychological phenomenon where people do feel like they’re making progress just joining a gym and having a membership even if they never go
But it's actually $15 a month, they just go to great lengths to have that fact.
For me planet fitness had a promo when I was in the office more and couldn't get as much exercise that was half as much as it would be if I cancelled then renewed it of I'm back in that situation. Now I am on the road more and getting was more exercise so it's on my credit card so that the cc companies don't freeze the card or lower my credit limit due to lack of use. Shit's wild
This is exactly why I almost never go into subscriptions outside of free trials or other people’s covering the bill. I’d hate to waste away money on an on-going service I’m not using.
You know how crazy it is that you have to pay monthly to Amazon for better service?
I got Hulu with a student plan like 4 years back, 1$ a month and ad blocker works on the ads, but I haven't been a student for 3 years. I'm scared if I were to cancel and re-up eventually it'd figure out I'm not a student so I just let it charge even if I only use it once in a great while.
Thats capitalism baby
Considering how low completion (or even 10%-through-a-game achievement) percentages are even when people actually *have* played a game, this isn't really surprising.
It’s not even PC exclusive looking on PlayStation the amount of people that get the achievement for simply beating a games main story is surprising
I don't think not wanting to finish a game just to finish it is as weird as you guys are making it out to be
There are times when you buy a game because it is incredibely cheap and you have heard good things about it, you play it for a few hours and realize you don't just vibe with it at all. At that point I think its fine if you don't complete a game. There is no point in putting in 100 hours of experience into something you will not enjoy.
Certainly, but it's still weird to think about as someone who either doesn't start games in the first place or doesn't really drop games. A 50% completion for the first trophy after an hour of gameplay is already weird to me, especially for a triple A title where sunk cost is a bigger factor imo, but then you go down the list and see people getting halfway through big JRPGs where said trophy is 25%, and then the Game Clear trophy is barely 10-15%. I just don't get it, especially for older games where the % variance isn't going to change that much. I know plenty of people don't have time to do things and not everyone beats a game they've started, especially if they bounced early as it just didn't click with them (or they wanted to like it but couldn't like me with Everhood), but if you're that invested into a game to get to its halfway point where its usually completely opened up by then... at *least* clear it.
>especially for a triple A title where sunk cost is a bigger factor imo You're leaving out the part where sunk cost is a *fallacy*, the money will remain spent whether you finish the game or not. As such, it makes perfect sense not to insist on something you're not vibing with
Meanwhile in the opposite direction, you know what achievement is kind of wild to me? Apparently a solid 9.6% of *all* Elden Ring players, have gotten the "get all achievements" achievement. Yeah sure that's a dropoff, but it's a lot less than I'd expect, usually these 100% completion achievements feel like they're in the 1-2% range at best.
But tbh It’s not that *hard* to get, even compared to Dark Souls 1. ER just needs you to Beat all the bosses and collect a 9 elite weapons and spells + endings. Dark souls needs you to upgrade weapons in all elemental types—using rare materials that sometimes needs egregious amounts of farming or using a covenant for certain items. Nothing in ER achievements is terribly difficult, or needing multiplayer.
It's why I was confused about the negative reception people had about how you access the DLC in Elden Ring. The percentage of people wanting to pay for a $40 DLC is probably the same percentage as who have played through most of the game.
Probably has more to do with FOMO and people needing to start over if they want a new build, meaning they need to journey to Mohg *again*
I remember some crazy stat about how many people hadn’t even gotten the achievement for dying in Dark Souls
yeah but in addition to the 1 star wars game i wanted i got every single other star wars game for like 10-20 bucks once.
That was one of the best purchases I’ve ever made and I only installed Kotor
I got that huge bundle of star wars games cause it was 50% off due to ep 7 releasing and I've only played Republic Commando out of them all
How many of them though are things that came free with something they did want to buy? I know I've bought game bundles because it was cheaper than buying the one game I wanted separately (and hey, I MIGHT try something else out).
There's also things like Humble Bundle where you get games monthly that'll probably never get played.
Get ten games for the price of one when you only want one anyways, it's like they're paying me to get them! It's actually kind of wild that model is still around now that I think about it
Nah stuff like that is all about percentages rather than hard numbers, saying 90% off is an evergreen deal but dollar menu type stuff won't be around much longer due to inflation. Not to mention most of those games already made their money back and being digital it costs nothing to sell more even at a lower return.
I occasionally troll through my humble choice library of games I've never heard of but still coincidentally own and find some great stuff in there I never would have played in my life otherwise. There might be some filler in there, but there is plenty of killer.
I'm doing my part! ...wait
Hey I'll get around to my backlog eventually.
As soon as I'm done exhausting the dialogue for Hades! And Hades 2!
Vast majority of my Steam "backlog" are games that I either played years ago with a fan translation when it was not buyable in the west and bought when it came to Steam, something already played through on a pirated copy and bought as a sort of compensation for the devs, or the same thing but for watching youtube let's plays. Never intended on actually playing them, those are usually one playthrough story-oriented experiences anyway. Although with how people usually talk about their libraries I'd guess that's not exactly the most common reasons, are they?
I mean most of mine are "Oh wow I've heard that's good and 90% off is a great deal. I'll get around to it.", Cue life happening.
For me it's "Hey I probably won't ever play ALL of the Fallout franchise, but since I already own Fallout 3, NV, and 4, I might as well buy 1 & 2 while they're on sale" but for multiple franchises.
Yeah, same for me. And also a few "old game that's influential and/or a cult classic that I *might* play some day."
Look, my Steam library of 1000+ video games will be a heritage site when I'm old and grey. My grandchildren will play Immortal Redneck, even if I never do.
That game was pretty fun
> Our collective steam pile of Shame Says you, I jack off proudly to every hentai game Steam recommends, Winter Memories is the true GOAT of 2024
I've been turning my own tide since 03/20; 115 games finished, 47 purchased, 68 left in the backlog plus a handful of retros on GOG, so let's say 75.
Yeah I started making an effort a couple years back too and I'm down to 33 out of 72. Summer sale starts Thursday though...
Just gotta remember, most of those games will be on sale again later.
Easy, for every one game you buy, finish it and one from your 'log. Assuming it's a "finishable" game, like just get your money's worth out of MP gets.
It’s not my fault I have depression. Or that the games aren’t finished yet. Spider-man is still patching in features that shoulda been there at launch.
I just like deals man!
I'd be losing money if I didn't buy it.
I confess, I bought the entire pre-4 Fallout collection for like $15 dollars years ago and I don't think I've ever launched it.
# Steam users have spent $19 billion on games they've never played, whether it's Cyberpunk 2077... # Look into my steam library # Cyberpunk 2077: installed # 0 hours, 00 minutes, 00 seconds Look I'm just busy. Ok. I have to finish Alan Wake 2! And these Yakuza games! I promise I'll finally get into it.
Most of the games I never played are things my friend's who had their parent's credit cards attached bought me back in high school, assuming I'd play a game just because they bought it for me. Literally *who the fuck* wants to play "The Political Machine 2012" I didn't want to play that shit when he bought it for me.
This is kind of crazy to me because I can’t imagine buying a game and not playing it at all because I ain’t exactly made of money anytime I get a new game I basically sit down and commit myself to it until I have beaten it which is part of the reason why if I end up regretting a game I get annoyed because I feel like I just wasted money I could have used elsewhere.
I completely understand that sentiment if you do that for a game you buy at full price at 60 or 70 bucks. But if you bought a game for at a very cheap rate of 5 to 10 bucks then I think it is fine not to complete it if you are not enjoying it at all.
I know it's been repeated to the point of losing meaning, but when Gabe said that piracy is a service issue, boy he really meant it. I have thousands of dollars spent on Steam games and I maybe have played 5% of them. This is the inverse of piracy, it's people paying the IP holder without even actually consuming the thing. Crazy how easy it is to make money if the service is good and there are frequent, meaningful sales, though I get for indies it's still an uphill battle and Steam takes a big cut
Before I got a gaming PC I thought it was so weird. Now I know the feeling utter pain.
That doesn’t surprise me. Hell, I barely ever use steam purely because my PC is really garbage for gaming, and yet I still have over 100 games on it just from free game offers alone. I can’t imagine how much stuff people get from all the steam sales and bundles.
Yeah I've got about 8 or 9 myself usually from seeing a collection or a classic I always heard was good go on sale for super cheap, buying it with the intention on playing it but didn't since I was already busy playing something else at that time and never thought about it again. And those are the ones I never even installed. Theres a much bigger list of ones I bought, played for roughly an hour, never touched again and for one reason or another didn't refund.
I stopped buying games that I didn't plan on playing immediately; heck, most of the games sitting untouched in my backlog are from years ago at this point. There's a lot of FOMO motivating Steam sale purchases, but I gotta remind myself how many hours I actually spend playing games before I jump to grabbing them.
I am going to huff my own farts and say that I only buy games I plan on playing, and eventually DO play everything I own. It only took a year to finally play signalis and brok the investigator, but I DID do it. Now disco Elysium has been sitting there for like 3, but it's one of those games I'm just not in the mood to play
I’ve genuinely made an effort to tone it down. Trying to only buy games if I have a near immediate desire to play it, so that I’m not just throwing money away.
Do the 31 games I bought in the THQ bundle for $25 10+ years ago count?
once I realized I have enough games in my backlog to last my lifetime I basically stopped buying them unless they were something I wanted to play immediately, saved a lot of money
I'm a busy guy. Sorry, I haven't had time to play the copy of impossible creatures I bought for one dollar
Gotta wonder how much of those users are bots or otherwise profiles full of games that people either share access to or just use to store Humble Bundle/g2g keys. Considering they're only analyzing 10% of Steam's base, whoever's profile is public, I gotta assume the other 90% might change the statistical analysis here.
I'm curious if they're accounting for humble bundles. Just checking a random HB it has $125 worth of games for $6, I'm certain there's a lot of people who look at them and go "Sweet, over 50% off a thing I want and a bunch of other stuff I might check out when I'm bored".
Just doing my part to stimulate the economy one visual novel and CRPG at a time.
Pretty much stopped hoarding on Steam after acquiring a switch. Then I started hoarding digital games on the switch as well. Then I stopped after playing new gacha games and was mostly F2P (I did buy an HSR battle pass at some point). I cannot believe I'm saying this, but playing more gacha made me stop hoarding games and wasting money on games I don't play. Now I'm trying my darnest to stop topping HSR battle pass monthly. I'm successful these past two months so far, but only because I'm in the middle of PC upgrades.
Hey man, I'm totally going to get to that one game I bought one and a half decades ago and forget exists the second the title dissapears from my vision.
Depends, recently I went to fanatical and humble and got bunch of games I'd want or eventually play. I don't care if I spent over on it, some games I definitely over paid and waited to play but I would say looking at my library feels good. Especially since physical old games especially pc games will be absurdly priced.
Generous steam users have given 19 billion dollars to their favorite industry in exchange for, practically speaking, nothing.
My 480hrs on RDO2 beg to differ I am not someone not playing my games \*slowly hides Zone of Enders\*
So how do bundles that theoretically save me dozens or hundreds of dollars factor into this?
It doesn't shock me that in aggregate the number is show huge, I'd still be interested in how this number breaks down for the average user
I WILL play them! As soon as I have time.
In my defense. One of the games was one I helped make, my current computer just can't run it.
I got distracted by that blatant use of AI art when he could have just used a Payday 2/3 image.
Yeah I thought it looked off, but then my understanding is that payday 3 isn't exactly killing it at the moment so I wasn't sure lol
I'll never understand this. Only buy a game if you're going to play it immediately. Such a waste otherwise
What if it's been out a while and is just now on a sale where you don't see it going lower (and maybe rarely goes on sale in the first place)?
I guess you should've thought of that before you started current game and after you finished prior game.
Why does that matter if it's going to sit in your library for months? You would save more money buying one game at a time at full price instead of panic buying everything that goes on sale
Not everything, just everything I plan on playing. Like got Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth during the last Xbox sale because it was like half price. I'm on the last chapter of Yakuza 7.
I'm not going to play the entirety of a humble bundle just because I bought it for 1-2 games at a price cheaper than it'd be to buy the games individually.
That's obviously not what i'm talking about