• lordnikon@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    alternative headline “steam users have a ton of games they got from a humble bundle for super cheap and we didn’t take that into account and used the msrp value of each game for this shocking headline.”

    Also some games don’t count time on older games. i know I have games like half life 2 episode 1 that i have beaten that show I never played them since I played them before they started tracking time.

    • Lets_Eat_Grandma@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      I’ve had games not record time because I was in offline mode on vacation and I pre-downloaded it, or I just played in offline mode or directly from a game’s executable without steam’s crap embedded.

      In the past it’s been trivial to set achievement unlocks and time played with 3rd party tools too.

      I don’t see any kind of discounts mentioned either. I almost never buy from steam directly, usually reputable 3rd party sites like Fanatical, GamersGate, WinGameStore etc that I find through isthereanydeal. It’ll show as being on my account but nobody knows what I paid for it and I almost never pay MSRP.

      Then there’s the countless bundle keys I used to get that I definitely never played and will never play because I wanted 2-3 games in a bundle of 10-20 that was cheaper than one of the games alone.

      It wouldn’t shock me at all if there was 10 billion worth of unplayed games though. I have friends that buy all the hot releases and then barely touch them because a couple hundred bucks a month is not significant to their monthly budget.

      • lordnikon@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        agreed but barely touch is not the same as never touch that’s why I think they are looking at play time as some kind of real metic where it’s been broken from the beginning. You make a really good point as well about offline can also impact that as well.