There’s a web tool that estimates the value of your Steam account by looking at all the games you own, but it can’t tell you how precisely much you’ve actually spent on Valve’s wallet-plundering platform, microtransactions and all.
If you bought on sales or Humble Bundles then this number will be so far off its useless. If you only buy new and retail then I feel bad for you sucker.
After many years of selectively evaluating and purchasing bundles as my main source of new games, I’ve come to wonder if it would’ve been better to just buy the individual games when I wanted to play them at whatever the available price was - the rate at which I get through games is far lower than the rate at which games are available in “good” bundles. In the end I’m not even sure if I’ve saved money (because of how many games have been bought but are as-of-yet unplayed) and it does take more time to evaluate whether something’s a good deal or not.
The upside is way more potential variety of games to pull from in my library, but if I only play at most like 1-2 dozen new games a year then I’m not sure that counts for much 🫠
A bit tangential, but I also feel a lot of people make the same mistake with GamePass. I buy a lot of gameson release day (mostly indies, but also some AAA), so theoretically I should be the target audience for GamePass, but I did the math once for a three-month period and came out at a loss if I had bought GamePass.
Based on nothing but anecdotal evidence, the type of person to get GamePass also typically enjoys a lesser variety of games on average, making the cost/benefit ratio even worse.
I guess I’m a weird one. I’ve saved so much money using Game Pass it’s not even funny. Throw in the pc version, and I’ve saved even more. I can try so many different genres I wouldn’t typically risk my money for. I have also avoided buying games I thought I would love but then ended up hating.
Yeah, I don’t think I make that many that wrong purchases, although that doesn’t mean that a lot of games I enjoy end up unfinished due to limited time. When it comes to testing games, one thing that’s neat is that demos got a huge revival in the last few years, particularly due to Steam Next Fest.
Looking at the current line-up, I’ll say that right I’d probably come to a different conclusion, seeing as Blue Prince, South of Midnight and the new DOOM are all included. Then again, I use Linux, so I wouldn’t be able to use Game Pass even if I wanted to.
I let the charity be the deciding factor. Some times I will just get a bundle and move the sliders all the way over for EFF because I would have donated to them anyways. Other times I see that the cause (relief, children, etc) is just worth doing. If I don’t play the games, at least the money was not wasted.
That’s exactly why the next paragraph tells you how to find “External funds used” deep in the Steam Help menu…
If you dig you can find this on Amazon. I’ve been buying from Amazon since 1995 and the last time I looked my purchases were somewhere around $260,000. And that was before covid.
Do you have a link? I’ll start looking, will edit this comment if I find it.
Edit: Link to Steam total spend: https://help.steampowered.com/en/accountdata/AccountSpend
Edit: This seems to be how to do it for Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/hz/privacy-central/data-requests/preview.html - My data hasn’t come through yet so I don’t know how difficult it is to get the sum of all orders/refunds.
Home - > Account - > Purchase History
I don’t know why you would use a third Party Tool that estimates your purchases, when it has always been right there in your account, without estimates.
Main reason for me is that I have bought humble bundles, donated to gamejams, and gotten keys off of legit and grey-market sites in the past in conjunction with buying directly from Steam. Those aren’t included in the Steam spend category.
The tool doesn’t know how much you paid for it, though, so it’s completely ignoring sales, donations and in app purchases, and just applies a price to it.
You should look at the External Funds thing mentioned in the article. It gives a different spending breakdown than Purchase History.
Help > Steam support > My account > Data related to your Steam account > External funds used. (Its the 13th item on a huge page full of stuff.)
Hahaha this takes me back. My first purchases in 2011 were a few TF2 weapons. I got my account a short time after it went F2P.
You bought weapons?? In the mann co store?
lol yes. I did it a few times before I realized that it’s not a good way to get weapons. Only lost a few bucks.
Edit: Should clarify, my parents bought them.
TF2 is free to play ??
Don’t they make all their money on hats?
I don’t know… I haven’t played since 2007… hats ? I’m so out of the loop…
It is now. It wasn’t at first.
It was part of the Valve Orange Box and that was a big deal at the time. There was also a huge deal of whining from people who paid for it when Valve announced they were changing it to a free to play model.
Ok I see. yea my memory is of the orange box, on xbox. Or was it the 360 ?
That path is incorrect and the article tells you exactly how to find it on Steam, as well as the limitations of the third party tool you’re alluding to.
It’s been known for atleast 7 years: https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/8m9fxm/what_is_difference_between_totalspend_and_oldspend/
edit: no need to point out those are 2 different links, ill leave this up
This isn’t a 3rd party tool, it’s a separate Steam Support page that lists your total purchases. It basically takes the data from the Purchase History section (assuming that you usually pay directly and not using Steam gift cards) and totals it so that you don’t have to do that manually.
To judge my friends, of course.
Legit
$666 for 71 games.
Patient gamer reporting in.Devil gamer confirmed 😈
21 years on Steam was terrifying to see.
Yep. I’ve known about this feature for a while. I always think my numbers are insane and someone always comes along and one ups me so while I’m near the right end of the bell curve, I’m by no means at the end.
I did pretty good. So far 530 games for $1867
That’s about $3.50 per game
I often leave games in my wishlist until they are 70-80% off
530 dollars for 251 games in almost 22 years of service. Steam only logged about 210 hours in those years, which is bullshit. There’s almost no time recorded in Half-life, Day of defeat or Counterstrike and those are the games I played the most. I also got most games through Humblebundle, where I spent 270 dollars since June 2012. But as I haven’t been playing much on PC ever since the PS3 came out, the real money went to Sony and I don’t even want to know.
Oh damn. I’ve spent $30,359.76 on Steam in the 17 years I’ve had an account. And I just passed 4,000 games in my Steam library within the last month. That checks out.
What is wrong with you? Have you even played 10% of those games?
I really like video games. And I’m retired young(ish), so I have all the time in the world to game now.
Plus, I have a (relatively new) blog dedicated to introducing games to people, which encourages me to play through a variety of games in my library. It’s basically just archiving my “Random Screenshots of my Games” posts in !games@lemmy.world.
And according to the SteamDB, I’ve played 26% of my games. The last time I checked, it was at 38%, but that was maybe 2,000 games ago. I need to keep working through my library!
Damn, 26% is not too shabby. Thats just a lot of money for most people, but i guess other people buy figurines that they never do anything with at all, so it could be worse i guess. Well i hope you enjoy playing them :)
If you somehow dont have Metro 2033 yet, you can still add it to your library for free today.
Video games and collecting Sonic the Hedgehog comics are my two expensive hobbies; I don’t spend money on much else besides essentials (food, shelter), so I can afford to splurge a bit on these hobbies. I am not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but the US military took really good care of me for 20 years and continues to provide for me in retirement, so I’m able to live a pretty relaxed life now.
If you somehow dont have Metro 2033 yet, you can still add it to your library for free today.
I saw that it was free for 48 hours! I already have the whole Metro franchise, but I’ve informed my gaming friends about the deal this morning. Thanks for spreading the news!
One caveat to my Steam library is that I always try to wait for deals before I buy; I rarely buy anything at full price. I don’t want to think about how much money I might’ve spent if I bought everything at full price! 😱
Sounds like fun hobbies :) Money is worthless after you die so might aswell spend it on something you enjoy i guess.
Nice. Lucky! i would have spend more also if it wasnt for my pesky family /s
Oh, it’s not too bad. Rounds up to $60 a year and averages out to about $15 per game.
I got Steam so I could play Half Life 2 when it was released. May 4, 2006. 153 games. $1,725 spent.
This thing about not owning the games … um … Steam is a more reliable, stable, all around better repository for my games than any device I’ve ever owned. Other than the Ubisoft games that are designed to not be re-usable (never buy Ubi again) I have access to every game I’ve bothered to spend money on for the last two decades.
My 17-year-old account is at $600. That’s an average of $35 per year.
Most of my gaming spending for the last 8 years has been on Nintendo Switch. That number is too embarrassing to post.
$602.41 for 50 games in 18.4 years. Cost at today’s prices: $698. I’d say that’s a win.
2,095 hours. 72% of games played. Guess I need to get to work.
I wish I could track my pre-steam numbers. Id be interested to see how much time I put into Mechwarrior 3, or Rollercoaster Tycoon, or Unreal Tournament.
“May” nothing, I don’t.
TotalSpend 1433$ OldSpend 434$
Not sure if I should add the two ? or is the second one included in the first one ? Anyway that’s not too bad for a 14yo account
It’s formatted weird on the Steam page but I have this text at the top.
“TotalSpend” is the total amount of external funds applied to your account. This value is used to determine if an account is a “Limited User Account”.
“OldSpend” is the amount of external funds applied before Friday, April 17, 2015 18:00:00 UTC. If your account was linked to Perfect World for CS:GO or Dota 2,
“PWSpend” will be the approximate USD value of funds applied from Perfect World, otherwise that value will be zero. If your account has applied external funds in Steam China,
“ChinaSpend” will report that total, in RMB.
Weirdly I also have a row for “PackageOnlySpend” that doesn’t have a definition.
Yea same, I don’t know what that last one is. So Total is the total, and Old is the part of the total that was applied before april 17th 2015. I think it makes sense. About 100$ a year, or roughly 8$ a month. I was afraid what I’d find tbh
$11,000 over twenty years. Jesus.
