This month, I bought 226 PC games for C$185.82 ($134.58)
Now are those a lot of games? Yes, it’s a silly amount of games. Perhaps I’m addicted to good deals that deliver fun.
We all have a vice, and this is mine. I don’t drink, or smoke, or gamble – but I buy lots and lots of video games.
Though back when I was a console gamer, I’d might get eight games for that price – if I were lucky.
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You still spent less than buying two AAA at release
Ooof. Really puts things into perspective
Good deals that deliver fun.
If that’s what you’re buying in a single month, I’d hate to know how much you’re buying in a year.
The sad truth is that you’re spending this money but you’re never going to have the time to enjoy more than the upper crust of what all these games have to offer. You might dive deep on a handful of them, but you’re just lighting the rest of that money on fire and likely condemning a lot of good games to the digital equivalent of rotting on a shelf.
Unless this is some roundabout way of supporting dev teams this screams unfettered consumerism to me.
I’m not trying to offend you I promise. This is just very odd to me. I don’t even think I’ve played 200 games in my life and I’ve spent a fuckload of time immersed in games of all kinds for ~30 years.
I’ve played 22% of my Steam library and 25% of my GOG library.
Most of the time, I don’t finish the games. But I’ve got maybe 1 hour of enjoyment out of most of them—sometimes more. And I typically pay less than C$1.00 per game.
Meanwhile, at my local arcade, I sometimes pay $1.00 for a mere minutes of play.
Is it unfettered consumerism? Maybe it’s consumerism. If so, it’s certainly fettered.
I place hard limits on what I spend, and each game must be regarded as worth playing.
If there’s one regret I have it’s that I don’t talk about the many hidden gems I experience as much as I wish I did.
Maybe it’s consumerism. If so, it’s certainly fettered.
Statements of the utterly deranged lol. You admit to buying stuff knowing there’s an 80% chance you never touch it. That’s indulgent no matter what budget you set.
I’m not one to shame steam libraries, mine is certainly lopsided in playtime, but if you’re in it for collecting and preserving hidden gems just pirate. You’ll no longer be locked in to Steam and if you like a game you can still buy it at full price and give the devs more than pennies.
You admit to buying stuff knowing there’s an 80% chance you never touch it.
Nope, you failed to read what I wrote.
I said I’ve played 22% of my Steam library and 25% of my GOG library.
I also said, at various points, that I’m deliberately pacing myself through my backlog. I have already played around 2,000 titles, and I will be playing more.
Will I be playing all titles I own? Yes, at my own pace, with my own methodology.
I’m not one to shame steam libraries, mine is certainly lopsided in playtime, but if you’re in it for collecting and preserving hidden gems just pirate.
Nope, I’m in it for the collecting and the playing.
You’ll no longer be locked in to Steam and if you like a game you can still buy it at full price and give the devs more than pennies.
I’ve never had a Steam game removed from my account due to DRM. And should that ever happen, I have games on GOG that are DRM-free.
But also, I have downloaded and installed several abandonware titles in the past. I find piracy an inconvenient hassle. Both Steam and GOG give me the convenience of cloud storage, which I’m happy to pay less than a dollar for.
Basically, your entire comment boils down to you disapproving of how I enjoy games.
I paid an average price of $0.58 for 226 games—which is the price of a dinner at a restaurant.
Holy shit what restaurant are you going to that charges C$185 for a meal
A meal? I have a family of three.
My apologies, 76% 😂
Do you have a goal where you’ll stop and catch up? More games are being released than ever, if you get every deal you see those numbers won’t meaningfully converge.
I’ve never had a Steam game removed from my account due to DRM. And should that ever happen, I have games on GOG that are DRM-free.
It’s not just DRM, the platforms have carte blanche to change the terms of your license at any time. For example, they could start charging per download, completely remove offline library access, remove/censor games, delete your account at any time, etc… Gaben pinky promising to release all games DRM free if Steam goes under isn’t the same as having them.
Inheriting a Steam library is already against TOS, if they start strictly enforcing that your collection dies with you. GoG is slightly better at the moment, but only if you download all games on purchase (the DRM policy could change at any time).
I don’t personally pirate, but it’s the only way to really ensure access and ownership of your library. The hassle factor was true, but there are a lot of new tools in the space that make managing a library painless (a quick search shows Playnite as the game library equivalent of Plex/Jellyfin).
And all of that is putting aside the fair-value argument for creators. They’re getting ~$0.40 from your purchase, not enough to sustain themselves unless they have a massive number of sales.
By all means, enjoy your library and deal hunting games, but your methods run counter to your stated goals.
If Valve does something evil, then I’ll adjust when that time comes. For now, I have full access to my entire library, and this has been the case for the past 12 years I’ve had my account.
As far as I’m concerned, you’re thinking so hard about the legal risks of buying games legally, you’re not taking into account the legal risks of piracy.
You think game publishers haven’t sued the living tar out of pirates?
There’s a guy named Gary Bowser who was sent to prison for selling tools that hacked the Nintendo Switch. And when he got out, he still owed $10M.
So if you’re worried about risk, at least acknowledge where the real hammer comes down.
Sure, there are risks both ways but one can be mitigated more than the other. The piracy hammer has always come down on distributors with very rare exceptions. With proper precautions (VPN, usenet, foreign seedbox, etc…) nobody would ever know or care about the private individual self hosting a media server on a closet raspberry pie.
Legally you’re covered with Steam but you have very little actual control over your collection. The ideal is legal physical media that you can digitally copy and store but that’s basically impossible these days.
Legally, I can download all my installers from GOG, store them to a hard drive, and make a duplicate of that hard drive as a redundancy.
And believe me, I’ve thought about that.
What keeps me from doing that is the price of storage. One title alone can be 120GB.
This is ultimately why I don’t pirate. It costs me $20 for a 128GB SD card. But if I’m buying that game for $4 off Steam, it’s cheaper to store that game in the cloud—especially if I only average a couple hours of play per game.
There’s also the convenience of knowing the game will likely work, I (mostly) don’t have to edit DLLs, and malware is unlikely.
The only reason to pirate is for some bizarre moral reason, which I don’t share. It really is easier to just pay a couple bucks—store indefinitely, get to work immediately.
You’ll have to stop buying eventually to play through them all or you’re always gonna have some left in the backlog at that rate. Oo maybe you can hand down your library to your kids and they can continue on the effort
I don’t have to play through them all, though. I’m content with a few minutes.
Why should video games provide hours of entertainment?
When I grew up, that wasn’t the expectation. You played Donkey Kong for a moment, then you moved over to Galaga.
I guess it depends on the price point. I suppose even an hour or so I’d be content with if it cost me less than a dollar, you expect a lot more out of a pricier game though
I don’t get this, though. Less than 200 games in your life? How? Are you a baby? Do you play games for thousands of hours on a regular basis?
I own thousands of games and my most played games are in the thousands of hours, but if I boot up a game and play an hour of or two it I’m more than happy with that purchase, especially at a discount price. I spent twenty bucks last time I went to the movies and I didn’t even enjoy any part of what I watched.
I don’t get this, though. Less than 200 games in your life? How? Are you a baby? Do you play games for thousands of hours on a regular basis?
Huh? Is calling them a baby supposed to be an insult? 200 games in 30 years would be a lot of games. It’s not like one buy a new game everyday. 6-10 games a year would already be a lot. Most find the handful they like and continually play them.
I own thousands of games and my most played games are in the thousands of hours, but if I boot up a game and play an hour of or two it I’m more than happy with that purchase, especially at a discount price. I spent twenty bucks last time I went to the movies and I didn’t even enjoy any part of what I watched.
I’ve never seen the phrase “touch grass” be more appropriate ;)
No, no, not an insult. Like, literally are they a very young person and so 200 games is all they had the time to get around to. Like the OP I have thousands of games because it’s been decades of building them up. Even just on Steam I’ve had what, twenty years? Just my Humble Bundle subscription has probably spat out more than 200 games, just because it’s been on for long enough.
If you’re young you have less disposable income and less time, so you don’t have time to build up a library and you have more time to spend with each thing you get.
I mean, I still had what? 30/50 Mega Drive games by the end of that generation, and those were, inflation adjusted, maybe what, 200 bucks each?
For the record, I touched grass yesterday and that movie sucked.
There are at least 200 games at my local arcade. Few people beat them—and no one bats an eye at this fact.
I don’t see why PC games should be any different.
Is my intent to beat each game or is it just to have fun?
That’s a pretty big arcade. There were maybe a couple dozen in my go-to, if that.
I wonder if that’s where the generational thing comes from. I definitely sunk a lot of money in machines where I never got that far. Of the assortment I had access to in arcades I saw the end of story mode in maybe a handful. I was quite proud of 1cc-ing Double Dragon once. Otherwise it was considered to be a waste of money to dump money in continues. You’d play the first two stages of Metal Slug a million times and never see past them and everybody thought that was just how gaming was supposed to work.
Hmm, looking at the 6 games I have in my steam library since 2017
Hey, that’s fine. It’s fine to not be into games or anything else.
Weirder to not be into games and hang around a forum called “PC games”, but who am I to judge.
I’m a game lover, I just play ones that have a lot of replay value so I don’t have to buy so many LOL. I migrated from old C64 to Super Nintendo, Wii and XBOX, XBOX360 but moved to PC gaming and Linux PC gaming around 2017.
I genuinely don’t get the patience. You certainly didn’t spend the C64 era with five games on that thing. Nobody who had access to a double deck tape recorder did.
And these days if you like “replay value” to that degree there’s a ton of free to play grind treadmills. In eight years I’d expect you’d have at least tried a dozen of those. That’s less than one new game a year. If you play just two hours a week that’s both a bit of a stretch on “game lover” (more of a “very strict parents heavily monitoring their kid” range) and still hundreds of hours on each of those.
I’m not judging. Games are a thing where habits can be very different, it’s just… a bit of a extreme.
I’m curious, what games are those? What types of games do you find simultaneously engaging and all-consuming enough to spend a decade in just a handful? That’s not a challenge, I’m genuinely asking. Is it fighting games? MOBAs? Definitely not a linear narrative beginning-to-end thing, right? Are you full on speedrunning them at this point or getting really competitive?
Not sure why you got downvoted, it’s a legit question. C64 was double tape deck, and then QuikCopy on the diskette drive…so many games, that I spent too much time gaming.
But a few examples of now: WRC there are enough stages and cars and can try for better stage times / try to beat your ghost car etc.
MechWarrior 5 Mercenaries, which has a story arc but once you finish the story you can just keep traveling to look for new contracts, some with difficulty so high you lose a lot of equipment and almost become bankrupt / stranded, so there is always an element of risk. Also some generated worlds/scemery are just gorgeous for exploring. I have hit some game awards only 4% of players worldwide have.
But last few years my time is on MudRunners. (Shit sorry this got way to long)… If you havent tried it: Once you complete the tutorial tasks and a few main maps the game opens up into more freedom, and the tasks and terrain can be challenging. If you burn through that there is a mod community that has built so many more maps, vehicles and challenges.
If you have never played, the initial game is drab Russian vehicles and limited colour pallette scenes, where the goal is finding logs or picking up logs from key areas and delivering them to the saw mill across swampy and muddy maps. The physics are amazing for the terrain, as you drive over areas you are morphing the soft terrains and changing traction. Drive in same area too much or without 4wd engaged and you can easily bury your truck up to the axles, so you then have to hope there is a tree nearby that you can attach your winch to and try to pull yourself out. Sometimes you can’t so you have to drive out another vehicle and do a tow out.
The American truckers DLC adds more maps and vehicles and brightens up the scenery. Same game play, different challenges. More variety.
The time in game is sped up for day night cycle, but if you are able to load the logs into your truck or trailer you have to now drive them to the log station, either over hilly fireroads roads, or through forested areas, and cross rivers. There is no timewarp. Its precarious, with janky bridges, and deep water. Wheel placement, 4WD and posi traction locks on/off are needed to navigate out of areas. Managing a load down a grade where hillside camber wants to flip your truck means attaching the winch to side of truck on up hill tree to stop you rolling as you look for a down hilltree to lean truck body against to look for next anchor tree up hill. So it can take you hours to drive 1 mile. A tree breaks or you steer to hard and your truck is on its side and stalled, so you have to drive a rescue vehicle out to try to flip it back on its wheels.
You also have to manage fuel, 4wd and spinning in mud burns through it so fast, so getting a fuel tanker truck setup in a strategic spot so you make less long runs back to a fuel station is key.
Wow, I typed a lot. But seriously I can launch this at 11pm Friday night when wife has gone to bed, and get so engrossed that the sun will start rising Saturday.
And crossing a slanted plank bridge with a huge tank of a specialized russian logging vehicle can have my palms sweating on the controller and holding my breath. One wrong tire placement or miscalculation of how much the truck will slide and you are down in the river watching your logs float away and in fast water watching the truck be dragged down the river. Damage and abuse will degrade the truck, bringing a utility or garage trailer is often required to fix the truck in field. So the game has elements of planning, resource management, goals, understanding wheel placement of off roaring.But sometimes its just the beauty of driving out of the forest and the mist clears and sun is coming up over the hill, because some mod ad one are gorgeous.
The grappler arm log loader is also fun to operate. And sometimes its marvelling at the effort the devs went to to get soft physics right. You can swap views and see front of truck or Jeeps wheels smushing the mud as you plow forward (and accumulating mud on tires which affects grip), not too much wheel spin or you sink too much, and find out the reason you did get stuck is there is a large rock buried under the mud and its not until you get in the right position that your tire catches the rock and actually rolls it slightly to clear the underbody that you can move on.
So if you have patience for it and free time this game can fill a lot of it. LOL
I got downvoted? I guess that’s just a reminder to not trust anything you see on a federated app other than the text of the post. That’s not what it looks like on my side.
Anyway, Mudrunners is definitely a big time sink, but even there I’m surprised you never considered moving on to Snowruner or any of the spinoffs, or, I don’t know, the Dakar game they made at some point, if you are into WRC. That’s a surprising amount of passion and loyalty, but also of outright satisfaction with getting that version of that thing and never going back to the well.
Which is fine, it’s legitimate, it’s just a bit of an outlier way to go about it. Even the dudebros that only bought Madden/Fifa and Call of Duty bought those every year or every other year. The people who only played WoW or The Sims bought all the expansions or the characters in a fighting game. You are unusually focused, is what I’m saying.
You seem OK to me, it’s still better than getting addicted to drugs or gambling.
You do play those games right ?
I mean as far as hobbies go $134 ain’t a whole lot. And you didn’t really mention anything about your financial situation.
I spent $4k on a bicycle that I’ll probably replace in 3-4 years. And spend several hundred more in between, repairing and upgrading.
How many did you play?
I have a personal rule that I don’t play games until I own them for a solid month.
I’ve played quite a few games that I’ve bought during the month of April.
Uh, why?
That’s like the opposite of what I try to do with my purchases. I won’t buy something unless I’ve wanted it for a while (at least a week) that way if I do buy it, I know it’s something I truly want. VS if I impulse buy it I might not ever get around to it.
I’m a value buyer. I wait and wait and wait till there’s an obscene sale—at least 90% off retail price—then I swoop in and buy.
For example, I’ve wanted to play Quake 4 for decades. Then a couple of weeks ago, I got it for $0.64.
This is pretty much how I acquired the entirety of my library.
That doesn’t really answer the question. Once you have bought it, why do you then wait a month before playing them? That doesn’t affect the price at all
It gives me motivation to play through more of my backlog.
A simpler and cheaper way to achieve this is to only buy games you want to and will pay right now. You spend less money on just increasing the ever growing back log. Maybe even reduce it eventually. And if you do want a game and you want to play it right now, it doesn’t really matter what it costs in comparison, as they is probably a game or two per month. The backlog becomes the focus.
LOL. That wouldn’t be cheaper.
I want to play Black Myth: Wukong. If I buy it now, it will cost me $90. If I’m patient and wait a few years, I could get it for a fraction of the price.
Which is exactly what I did with Doom (2016), Skyrim, and Witcher 3. I bought them all for a fraction of their initial retail price.
Now am I bothered about the backlog? No, it will all be played eventually.
Outta curiosity, why that rule? Whatever the reason, I admire the restraint lol
It motivates me to look through my backlog instead of get all hung ho about games I immediately buy.
I may have bought 226 games this month, but there’s also many others that deserve to be played.
This is smart!
Have you played those games yet?
How do you know whether or not they are fun?
My Steam account is worth something like 30,000 dollars. I buy games constantly. Never play them. As long as you’re not sacrificing you or your loved ones well being. Who cares. Turn that money into something you want. That’s what it’s for.
What’s your mother’s maiden name?
How did you get a sub-dollar average on 200 games?
I’m not shocked by the count, we hang in the same leagues, I’m impressed by the penny-pinching. Even with bundles that’s a very consistently low average.
Bundles and sales.
Fanatical had a lot of killer sales this month.
Also, SteamDB helps you target games based on discount and price.
Sure, but… a dollar on average? Man, that’s some filter-feeding purchase pattern, hardcore. Even setting the bar on 90% discount keeps the full price fare at five bucks apiece, and that low in the stack it’s really hard to get enough games for fifty cents that you offset that spend. Unless you really don’t mind getting shovelware for that much, and I get the impulse… it’s a lot. Especially since Humble started putting a minimum spend on getting full packages it’s really hard to get there. Their twelve dollar subscription bundle works out at 1.50 per game or so these days.
I’d be curious to see that game list, because I’m guessing it’s quite obscure and unexpected.
Well, let’s take a look at the games I bought today:
- Ground Control Collection was $0.51. This includes Ground Control Anthology (Ground Control and Ground Control: Dark Conspiracy) as well as Ground Control II. That’s three games – which ends up being $0.17 each.
- Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death was $0.60.
- Anuchard was $0.67
- Men of War: Red Tide was $0.59
- Moonbase Commander was $0.44
Based on today’s hauls, that’s $0.40 per game.
I wouldn’t call these games shovelware. But they’re either old or they’re indie.
Occasionally, though, I do end up with a somewhat recent AAA title. Back in March, I got Far Cry 5 for 95% off – which ended up being $4.
I was fomoing a bit on the Ground Control series that cheap, but it turns out I do own those on GOG already :D
I remember being astounded when that came out at a 3D RTS where you could see the empty casings pouring out of the units’ guns. Good times.
Still, that shows up for five bucks, so no discount at all. Those key resellers are doing a lot of work in that process.
GOG has some crazy good deals. Right now, you can get Warhammer 40,000: Rites of War for free:
https://www.gog.com/en/game/warhammer_40000_rites_of_war
Another game that everyone should buy – because it’s incredible – is Blake Stone: Planet Strike. That’s selling for $0.57 right now.
Of their current Warhammer sale Epic 40K Final Liberation is easily my favorite. Such a neat little tactical game. Dawn of War I is also an all-timer.
But that is part of it for me. You do the “get it while it’s cheap” thing long enough you start to run out of things that go cheap. Once you have a library in the thousands a lot of these things that go on sale frequently start getting off the board.
I guess if you keep it as tight as you do and put a cap on either a very high percent discount or a very low total cost you take longer to get to that point.
That’s less than a dollar on average.
Yes, I said that up front. I’m rounding up to not have to say “eighty cents” each time.
sounds like you just buy them cause they are cheap. most of them are probably slop. i bought a ton of games below 1 dollar at kinguin, but those were actually in my whishlist, i was waiting for them to play.
your case is similar to a collector, than an actual user. collecting can be a hobby, and if you feel comfortable in your financial situation…then keep buying them mate. if you dont, then try to set goals and boarders, make a sub bank account just for games or something.
You’ve gotta shake off this weird myth that price equals quality. I picked up Quake 4 and Return to Castle Wolfenstein for $0.64 each. If that’s slop, hand me a spoon.
🥄
Some of my favourite games cost me less than a £
I bought both the Witcher 1 & 2 for around a buck cad each, not quite the same deal but still fantastic value for the cost.
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I only buy what i like and played or play. But yeah, large list anyway.
Okay, but you know how many games became my favourite even though nobody talked about them—but I bought them because the price was right? A stunning amount.
Then don’t just stare at them, play them you fool!
Don’t worry, I’m working on that.
How many do you have in total?
LOL. I’ve been collecting video games for nearly 40 years—almost the entirety I’ve been alive—starting with Atari 2600 carts.
So the answer is, I don’t know.
But it’s a lot. And I’m thankful Steam and GOG exists because I’m glad most of it is digital, not physical.
Okay, how about you tell us how many there are in your Steam and GOG library? Should be fairly easy to get those numbers :)
All right, so on Steam, it’s 7,123 collected over 12 years. This includes some free games though. Officially, Steam says I have 5,342—so I assume that’s what I’ve paid for.
On GOG, it says I have 401 games. But a large chunk of that are free games—though not a majority.
On Epic, it says I have 97 games. I have not paid for a single one.
On Xbox Game Store, it says I have seven games. I only paid for one.
On Amazon, I have three games, all free.
And on itch.io, I have three games currently installed—nothing I paid for. But I have my eye on one specific game that I might pay for.
EDIT: I guess this doesn’t count collections that exist on Steam. For example, I recently got a Castlevania Collection that’s contains nine Castlevania games.
Impressive and thank you for supporting the gaming industry this heavily
Does it count as collecting for digital renting?
Of course it’s collecting. But it’s like underwear collecting: you don’t resell it.
Depends on the country ig
