6d ago

'Knowing Steam players are hoarders explains why you give Valve that 30%,' analyst tells devs: 'You get access to a bunch of drunken sailors who spend money irresponsibly'

www.pcgamer.com 'Knowing Steam players are hoarders explains why you give Valve that 30%,' analyst tells devs: 'You get access to a bunch of drunken sailors who spend money irresponsibly'

"More than likely the person buying your game is not going to play it."

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www.pcgamer.com /gaming-industry/knowing-steam-players-are-hoarders-explains-why-you-give-valve-that-30-percent-analyst-tells-devs-you-get-access-to-a-bunch-of-drunken-sailors-who-spend-money-irresponsibly/

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Knowing Steam players are hoarders explains why you give Valve that 30%

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Are non-Steam gamers not also hoarders? Because if they are, that whole argument falls apart.
- I don’t think I’ve spent a dime on Epic but have a nice little collection going there. I have spent a reasonable amount at GoG and have a nice collection there, too.
- 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.
  
  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
  
  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.
- Not to the same degree.
  
  My wall of shelves loaded with board games says otherwise...
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  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
- 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.
  
  My epic library is nearly 10% of my steam one, and I've only bought a couple games.
- 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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