• callouscomic@lemm.ee
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    4 months ago

    This is bullshit analysis. People can buy their steam keys from endless sources and sales. Some games that would have been $20+ some people can get for as little as $0.50 depending on circumstances.

    It’d be impossible to calculate how much has been spent. They also just straight multiplied the amount of public ones instead of better estimating that using data they had.

    All you can do is say how much they are currently or were worth. Considering how steep the price drops can be for many games, it’s a pretty wide range of possibilities and makes estimating this fairly worthless.

    Just a deliberately bullshit headline made by idiots wielding “data science” hype.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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      4 months ago

      Exactly. I almost never pay full price on Steam, and I add a lot of keys from Humble or Fanatical bundles where I only intend to play half or so.

      So yeah, I’m guessing it’s actually 10% or so of that figure if we make a few rules:

      • count bundles as a single game, and if one game is played from it, that counts for the whole bundle
      • assume games added to Steam are part of a bundle (perhaps in groups of 5)
      • don’t count games that were ever given away free
      • assume all games were purchased at a discount

      That would probably get us pretty close to the real number.