Summary
Over the weekend, some number crunching by the PCGamesN team revealed that there’sprobably about $19 billion worth of gamesinSteamplayers’ backlogs that have never been played. As TheGamer’s news team quickly calculated, that is more than the net worth of X (formerly known asTwitter), and more than enough to buy any Major League Baseball team. It’s also more than the annual GDP of fifteen countries.
That’s a pretty striking figure, one that’s likely exacerbated by Steam’s regular sales, like the Steam Summer Sale going on right now till July 11. I’m a sucker for a Steam sale.Like TheGamer columnist Mike Drucker, I see Steam sales as an opportunity for me to spend an inordinate amount of money on video games that I know very well I may never find the time to play.
Unlike Mike, though, I am not actively having a crisis over the games I buy on Steam. On the contrary, I’m generally pretty pleased with the massive backlog I’ve built up over the years, and there are several trains of thought I use to justify my poor financial choices.
I’m Getting To Play Games I Wouldn’t Otherwise Have Spent Money On
Because of the nature of my job, I find myself playing near every triple-A game that releases in a given year. That’s often through codes distributed by PR, but I also regularly shell out for games I don’t get codes for, just because I want to keep up with trends in the industry and pitch in on the discourse.
Unfortunately, because it’s usually triple-A games that dominate mainstream interest, I find myself letting very cool indie games fall to the wayside. There are countless smaller games that piqued my interest but that I never threw money at, just because it didn’t make sense for me to buy a game I wouldn’t have time to play.
That doesn’t mean I don’t ever want to play those games, or that I’m willing to let them fall entirely to the wayside just because they were released at the same time asBaldur’s Gate 3or whatever. I still want to check those games out, it just doesn’t make sense for me to buy them at full price if I’ll be sitting on them for months or years. But Steam sales are an incentive for me to pull out my credit card and pick up the smaller games on my wishlist that have been calling out for attention, and once they’re actually in my library, I’m more likely to remember they exist.
My Money Is Going To Independent Developers
Another reason I don’t mind having a ton of games I haven’t played is that, regardless of whether I ever boot up the game or not, money is still going into the developers’ pockets. We’re in a time where studios big and small are all at risk of layoffs and closures. Me buying a game that I wouldn’t otherwise have bought, even if it’s at a discount, means I’m putting a little more money into the pockets of smaller publishers and developers and, in some small way, injecting a little cash into the industry I care so much about.
I believe in mutual aid as a principle, and I attempt to give money to my community whenever I can. Right now, the gaming industry is struggling, and independent developers in particular need help where they can get it. Buying a game that never gets opened really isn’t a big deal to me, because it’s not awaste– my money is still going to developers I want to support. Take my money, I don’t care!
There’s No Real Waste
Another thing: Steam is a digital storefront, and these are all digital games. This isn’t like a Shein haul where you can buy a ton of stuff on sale, never wear them, and end up throwing them away or donating them to your local thrift store (that doesn’t want them anyway because they’re badly constructed). Buying a digital game doesn’t waste material resources, and I don’t have to feel bad about ruining the environment or creating clutter in my home.
The onlyrealwaste is my money, assuming you believe money is real and not a social construct, and like I said, I don’t consider that money wasted at all. So, yes, I have a ton of games that I might never play, and yes, I did spend nearly $70 on games I might not ever touch, andyes, I do need to rein in the amount of money I spend on games because ‘it comes out of my taxable income’ is not a good reason to spend as much as I do. But I’ll never run out of games to play, and I’m supporting developers, so really, does anybody lose?
