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From: Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Subject: Re: $19 billion on unplayed games
Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2024 19:47:02 -0700
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
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On 6/27/2024 9:39 AM, Xocyll wrote:
> Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> looked up from reading the
> entrails of the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs
> say:
> 
>>
>> You've probably read -or at least heard mentioned- the news story that
>> Steam users have spent $19 billion USD on games they've never played.*
>> (If so, you've probably also heard some wag jokingly claim, "Yeah,
>> well, I'm probably responsible for $1 billion of that"**.) You may
>> even have heard counters to this estimate, calling it wildly
>> inaccurate (something I myself tend to agree with).
> 
> Hadn't but I doubt the number is anywhere near accurate.
> 
> Steam only counts playtime If and only IF you started the game through
> steam.
> 
> Star Trek Online for instance was sold as a game direct from the company
> first, then downloadable through arc (still is) and then through steam.
> 
> You can start it without steam knowing.
> 
> It says 146.2 hrs for a game I've played near daily for over a decade,
> because I only ever started it through steam if I was make a game
> currency purchase.
> 
> The couple years of play of Fallout4, according to steam amounts to 11
> minutes.
> 
> Path of Exile, another heavily played one, no time at all.
> 
> Warframe, haven't played it years but played it heavily for a while,
> steam says 6 minutes.
> 
> So yeah, not trusting "Valve Math", since it apparently assumes no one
> can live without steam or would start a game any other way.
> 
> And that's not even counting the value of the freebies that we
> "purchased" for nothing - how are they being counted, as a zero value
> sale, or regular price - betting it's regular price.
> 

Oh yeah, I've definitely got some I haven't played according to Steam 
but most definitely did.

I've got a lot of the opposite too, where I just left a game running 
even overnight because it was a pain to exit and/or start it and didn't 
become unstable.  Or in the case of the DS series my hours are probably 
wildly exaggerated as I often think I closed it, but that just returned 
it to the title screen, as you can't just exit game (well Alt-F4 works 
but has some likelihood of not saving your progress)

-- 
-Justisaur

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