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.


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.

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.

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

A bunch of drunken sailors who spend money irresponsibly? So... pirates?

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.

I would guess the line between the two groups is about one plank wide.

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

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.

Or they just like a really good deal which is a known marketing tactic since buying stuff with currency was a thing? "99 cents for this thing I may or may not need? Down from two dollars?! Sold!" Maybe the term hoarders, as in people with an actual mental issue, is not the right term. More like frugal. Let's face it. Steam sales are when they sell the most copies of any title. Now if you are buying games at full price every time with no intention of playing, you're just a dumbass and need a lesson on the value of a dollar.

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

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.

Just pirate both and spend the money on gambling like a real pirate lol

> pirating food You wouldn't download a burger

Hey.... Fuck you

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

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.

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

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.