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[–] 1 point 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

I don’t think I can speak for everyone, but the majority of the games I have on steam that I will never play are older big name titles that I got in bundles on sale with other games I wanted to play.

I have a lot of indie/smaller studio games on steam, and I’ve played all of them a decent amount. I think the reason games from smaller or independent studios do better on steam is because they actually get put forward and highlighted by events. Like, there are mechanisms in place to promote them to people who wouldn’t have heard about them through word of mouth.

I think the larger issue is that other storefronts are just… bad about highlighting games that aren’t from huge studios and massive publishers, obvious exception for GOG who is more focused on game preservation and older niche games, but even there I rarely see new stuff from small/indie studios getting promoted.

Like, sure on epic they’ll get a 80% cut, or what ever it is, but 70% of 1000 sales is a lot more than 80% of 10.

Also, like, the comparison to Netflix is absurd. When you pay for a Netflix subscription, you are paying for literally all of the content they have, and I’m pretty sure it would be impossible to watch everything on there. It also sucks because if I want something niche or novel, there is no incentive for that to be produced because my payment is spread evenly across everything Netflix is producing.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    I play every game I buy, might not finish them but they all have playtime in excess of 2 hours. I also don't own anything from AAAAAAA developers as I make a VERY conscious decision to specifically never give them money. Indy devs or small studios only.

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  • 41 comments in c/games@sh.itjust.works view that post
    [–] [S] 1 point 1 year ago

    Can this business model survive a recession?

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  • [–] 45 points 1 year ago (12 children)

    Are non-Steam gamers not also hoarders? Because if they are, that whole argument falls apart.

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  • [–] [S] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I know plenty of console gamers who buy physical copies of newest releases, complete them and sell them on local Craigslist equivalent. They hold a handful of games at most. Not really possible on PC anymore.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I have a friend who buys every single console game released and never plays any of them. Physical copies georg is an outlier and should not be counted

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 year ago*

    Probably depends on location. Games are stupid expensive compared to typical income here. I make pretty good money but I wouldn’t be able to justify games at current prices if it wasn’t for second hand market and Game Pass.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (4 children)
  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    My wall of shelves loaded with board games says otherwise...

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    When I say to the same degree I'm not saying there aren't people with thousands of games elsewhere. I'm saying there are more of them on Steam and they tend to collect higher amounts of games on average.

    Board game enthusiasts don't always have thousands of board games, most console gaming enthusiasts don't have giant walls of games lining their house, etc.

    That said, I don't have sources to cite here other than my personal interactions with other steam users on social media and my steam friends list number of games. I could be wrong as this isn't hard data but I'd bet money I'm correct though if there was a way to verify the comparison.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    Unfortunately, the article doesn't really compare to other collectors. My wife's bookshelves are full of a much higher cost library than my Steam library could ever hope to achieve, and many of them are still on her "TBR" list. She'll also never read those physical copies, so she's buying them twice so she can read them on her Kindle or listen on Audible.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    Could that just be due to the fact that things like humble bundle would give 10+ games a month for like 20$? Or the amount of sales that steam has allowing you to get another another 10 - 20 games for 50$, or the price of a board game?

    If Nintendo, still epic, or Xbox had sales of this magnitude I'm certain you would see significantly more "hoarding" there as well

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    The argument isn't that only Steam gamers are hoarders. The argument is that game hoarders congregate on Steam. You can have hoarding gamers in the wild, and those wild hoarders may never touch Steam, but you're guaranteed to find hoarding gamers on Steam. If you're looking to sell games to hoarders you're going to sell more when you do it where hoarders regularly visit.

    It's the same reason Epic is giving away free games. They're trying to attract hoarders by giving them a free hoard and regularly inviting them into their shop. They won't really attract hoarders who are entrenched on Steam but they will attract future hoarders who might not yet have a huge Steam library.

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  • I’m a console gamer, I’ve never cared about my library to the point I actually threw away games from previous gen’s once I got the new console. That was me as a kid mind you. Nowadays, I just don’t buy games at all thanks to gamepass. So yep it kinda tracks, at least anecdotally.

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  • [–] 30 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    A bunch of drunken sailors who spend money irresponsibly?

    So... pirates?

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    I think if I was irresponsible with my money, I'd be paying for games and pirating food instead of the other way around. 🤷‍♂️

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    pirating food

    You wouldn't download a burger

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I would download a nice steak and a healthy salad instead!

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  • [–] 27 points 1 year ago

    Hey....

    Fuck you

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    He doesn't consider game bundles like e.g. humble bundle. There you can get loads of steam games which you might activate but only play a few from.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago*

    My steam library is full of humble bundles that I only bought for 2 games because it would be like $5, cheaper than buying regularly, and still getting like 7 other games with them.

    And that's even with me giving away keys from games I know I won't ever play.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago
    [–] 12 points 1 year ago
    [–] 10 points 1 year ago

    You've got a lot of nerve being right

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  • [+] 12 points 1 year ago (8 children)
  • [–] [S] -2 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    Digital hoarding is a mental disorder same as any other form of hoarding.

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  • [+] 7 points 1 year ago* (2 children)
  • [–] [S] -2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    It is very common for people to joke about how big their backlog is. I’m not sure we can call buying things you’re never going to play as frugal. I’m on autism spectrum and do both regular and digital hoarding occasionally but I’m a bit more mindful about it ever since I admitted it. Many people seem to be in denial.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    Buying an indie platformer that you might not play is not anywhere close to actual IRL hording. And it's not even what is being described as digital hording in that article from UCLA.

    It's straight up irresponsible to compare it to an actual hording mental disorder. Like, you must not have ever experienced that in any capacity to think that.

    Although, surely digital horders have some cross over. But the prevalence of people not playing a game they bought on discount ain't it fam.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Completely agree. I think maybe digital hoarding can be real when it gets to the point where people are buying excessively to the point that they cannot afford it, but hoarding disorder would typically be associated with physical goods that are cluttering your space to dysfunctional levels.

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  • [+] 4 points 1 year ago* (1 child)
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Expanding on that, and explaining why this is not Digital hoarding, I have a HUGE catalog of games, lots of which came from bundles and such, if I was able to sell back games to steam, even if for a few cents, I would delete a big chunk of that. But as is I have no reason to do it, I can put them in a "never played" category and forget about them until I randomly find a game in the store that mildly interests me and notice it's already in my library.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    Funny enough, the link to Rich Shanton, the one who wrote this, throws a 404 error.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    So basically "Valve discovered a gold mine by selling you so many games" and "it's your fault for spendijg money on games". Yeah wait wut? As if it's someone's fault that so many games are getting released. Also ending with "beware, not every customer is a die-hard fan". Wow.

    Go crack the F2P business model next, Sherlock.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Walled gardens create digital plantations

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