If Steam were to shut down tomorrow how much money would you have lost in total on games / DLC ??
For me the answer is 847 USD over 14 years …
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.....erm
£12,898 according to SteamDB at today's prices
In my defense I've had my account for 20 years and had humble bundle monthly/choice for like a third of that time, so the real number is hopefully not quite that
You can check your actual spend in the steam support --> Data about my account section.
Even that won’t be perfectly accurate, as it doesn’t include money spent on secondary stores for steam codes. So things like humble bundles aren’t included.
True, but it at least covers all of the purchases actually made on the platform.
Oh, I didn't know that was a thing. Only $1,746 for me. Pretty sure my wife's is much more, but she's hidden her games.
$4,370AUD. Somehow both more and less than I expected. Over 11,200 hours of playtime over 18 years.
the money is already lost. if that happened i would pirate whatever i want to download again.
$0 because if steam deletes my library I’m going to pirate it back with 0 remorse
Nothing I couldn't pirate right back, given time.
Many steam games are DRM free and would work even if Steam shuts down. It's been like this at least since 2011 or so (that's when I discovered this, it could be earlier).
I guess the impact would depend on the types of game which one buys on Steam.
If you had them downloaded yes. But if you didn’t and they disappeared?
I would just a get pirated copy.
I haven't pirated games in a very long time, but this seems like a fair thing to do in such a situation. If the game is cheap and/or I like the studio, I would probably just rebuy on GOG.
Same here. Steam is the last "digital library" I'm ever really going to use or trust. I've been screwed over by everything else, so if that shuts down too, I'm basically just done, and will buy a NAS or something to hold all my games from GOG.
yep. the game exists somewhere. I've bought it. I have no issues pirating it to get access to it again. nobody has been hurt by this.
Steam has a back up feature I have my steam games backed up on my NAS
And, friendly nudge:
It's not hard to back up games from Steam. Especially those with no DRM. Just keep them on a drive somewhere.
Pretty expensive though, given the prices on storage. And many of them will be out of date in a few months. Face it, we can download from the high seas at any time, the only reason most of us are buying on steam is convenience. Whatever we could backup on steam today we could just retrieve from elsewhere at any time.
Only 4.2% of games on Steam are DRM-free. It's not as many as people think.
It looks like this list is manually curated, so there's probably more that just aren't documented as such.
Probably depends on your definition of drm free. You could start steam in offline mode and the vast majority of games would work forever. Their drm is also a known quantity and easily bypassed.
Didn't know it was that low, I knew it was a smaller share, but I thought it would be double digit percentages.
That being said, many critically acclaimed games are indeed DRM free on Steam.
Steam Offline mode is your best friend for archiving games forever.
Generic stream emulators already exist and is how a vast number of games are “cracked”
Heck, there's at least one opensource generic steam emulator that you just drop into the game files. I used it before when messing around with modding a multiplayer game, to run multiple copies at once.
Or by visiting this link: https://help.steampowered.com/en/accountdata/AccountSpend
1,205 games. $6,516 as of today. 19 year account.
The depressing part is that of the 1,205 games, 986 (81.8%) are showing as unplayed.
Apparently $3135 is what I've spent on Steam games, according to Steam themselves. That isn't what the current value is, but what I've actually spent.
Yeah, I have spent a similar amount on video games on steam
@64bithero
4771 € according to SteamDB
7228.16 USD with 2026 prices but don't forget inflation over the years.
https://help.steampowered.com/en/accountdata/AccountSpend this is a high security page so if you know how to open it in the steam client, that will be easier.
Great link. I really appreciate the savings too. $3400 total spend $3200 savings Bought my first game in 2017. Tough part is I was on humble choice for 2 years so that's all savings throwing off my numbers. But not bad for 9 years of fun.
According to SteamDB, $18,181 over 18.6 years. I'm sure that number will be much higher when the Steam sale is over, since it pulls data from current game prices.
Hah, I have you beat by $200.
...
Nice! Glad to know I'm not the only person sinking ridiculous money into my gaming habits. 😅
It's cool, I'm sure they'll bury me with my steam account.
More true than you know. Valve won't allow you to transfer accounts to other people, so your account is legally dead when you are.
I am completely fine with that. I wouldn't really expect anything different.
Nobody wants my steam account, they want and have their own, so its fine.
That's jaw dropping
Steam reports my total spend to be $4,114.82 Steam Calculator reports $4,518 when bought at lowest prices and $7,250 in today's prices. The calculator says I have 1,468 games, steam says 1,350 and my steam profile lists 1,354
I keep a copy of the generic steam crack on my computer. It's very well tested. So as long as I had the files on my computer I would only lost access to the very few games I have that use a different drm.
Many games on Steam are DRM free, included older Valve games.
SteamDB puts my account at $2400 "at lowest prices", but I've definitely spent way more than that, and I own dark souls prepare to die, which a new key for that is up on cdk4g and g2a for $400-$500 alone.
I've been thinking about buying a bunch of hard drives and downloading my entire library and cracking it all and stashing the drives in long term storage just in case. That's been a thought for a very, very long time though...
About US $3000 over 20 years. Not as much as I thought, to be honest. I wait for sales and try not to buy things unless I'm sure I'll play it.
Yeah, that's about what we used to spend on board games
Yeah same, less than I thought : 1445, but I'm pretty sure that includes my OLED steam deck. Savings a little over 2k.
696 games at $4142 over 22.5 years
Aah, that's a bit hard to calculate due to Steam keys from bundles and other websites. Running some rough numbers it looks to be about $2600 CAD over 15 years, so... not too bad?
Every insteresting game I "bought" on Steam is backed up (including a crack if required).
Total spend says 12k, not bad for 15 years considering how often I buy games for my friends lol
Like... 5 bucks or so? For Hollow Knight. The rest of the games are either free, demos or gift.
The vast majority of my library is on GOG
I don't wanna set my library to public so SteamDB can figure it out, but it's over $1000 just going by what I can get to in my purchase history (which does not go all the way back to 2003 when I first made my account and had gotten HL2 and Ragdoll KungFu as my first two purchases on Steam). Not sure how accurate SteamDB is anyway, since it wouldn't necessarily know if what I bought was on sale when I bought it 🤷♂️
I have mine set to private and can still use that steamdb calculator thing.
I've had an account for nineteen years. I think some of the stuff I've got is irreplaceable due to its obscurity.
£600 in 21 years apparently and most of that is from the first 10 years too. It's not my go-to store anymore.
Your Steam purchase history can be found under: https://store.steampowered.com/account/history/
I think purchases from other shops are not included (such as Humble Bundle), which makes sense. I have no total spent money calculated yet, so don't know.
I've had and been using steam since 2003... I really don't want to know what that number is. And I am also convinced someone is collecting this data point for nefarious purposes, because its 2026 and everything is being used for nefarious purposes. Including this comment.
Outside of my mom being an nefarious purpose there isn’t one here.
Rather to get a gauge of how bad and expensive it be if Steam just ceased to exist. Sounds like some people already had accounted for that
€100k more or less. I boycotted steam until left4dead2. Then I caved in. 50k was for the level though. And yes I know how stupid that is. The rest was games bought on steam. Then there might be more through other sources that provide steam-keys.
But it Wouldn't be really lost. At least not the games I already downloaded. Steam's DRM is trivial, so I would have at least those left.
Also, nothing to worry until gaben signs off. I predict it will then be turned into the usual us-american enshittification-craphole everything else is.
I don't understand
Also how big is your steam library if you don't mind me asking? I'm not up on my conversion rates but €100k is in the realm of house money
It's just your steam-level. Which you can basically push with money or time (a bit at least). It has no real inherent benefits beyond a certain level. It's to show off basically. For me it was the thrill of finding the most efficient automated method to gain it as fast as possible. A silly idea in hindsight, but I can get pretty obsessive 😑
Too big. And while it might sound much, it's over a course of over a decade. And I buy whatever comes out and is adjacent to my likings. So my backlog is too vast to manage in this lifetime. Nowadays I buy much less. Either to support indie devs or those I REALLY wanna play.
And where I live, this money wouldn't buy you a house. Not even an apartment. Except you don't mind burned down houses or so 😁
Shut down or not it's already lost.
A whole $00.00
While I have spent a large amount on games on steam, I have easily gotten my money's worth and would not regret it if it disappeared tomorrow. I would be disappointed of course, but would see it like an old console breaking and not feeling like replacing it.
This is mainly because I don't frequently replay games after I have had my fill of them.
Would probably just buy games I didn't already play on some other site like GoG.
Maybe $300 in total.
Idk probably about $250
More than $6815.18, because my account is older than 2015 and purchases only go back to 2015.
But in reality, I will just reacquire the games if my library gets taken. Barnes & Noble isn't breaking into my home to take books out of my bookshelf, it is not unreasonable to demand digital products are treated the same. So I treat them the same, regardless of what moron politicians say.
according to steamDB 1000€ at lowest prices 1700€ at today's prices over 16 years
kind of expected more
$1219.04 since 2011 (I didn't bother with Steam until Skyrim released and I was living somewhere without a local game store)
That is wise. I wish they had more than the old games and the handful newer ones. Their moment will come when gaben signs off and steam will enshittify
I was a pirate since the 80s. I even financed my first sports car with warez-cds 😁 But steam does have its merits. Don't worry about updates. As only the major games get updates by pir8s. But as steam's DRM is trivial, it's kinda easy-piracy. I already have like 50TB downloaded. If they ever go nuts I'll download all my favourites and write a script to un-drm them.
And I would love for gog to have current games too. Would stop buying at steam, but 99% of what gog has to offer I already have on steam for many years
I get the sentiment but not owning it does not equal not enjoying it. You never play any games with friends that only come out on steam? For some single player games I can understand waiting until they release on GOG but many (or like, most) never do.
$2908.44
That is what steam reports as total external funds added.
That includes hardware purchases (OG Steam Controller, Steam Link, and Steam Deck with the new price), and it doesn’t count the games bought on Humble Bundle.
Not as much as you might first think as I generally wait for Steam sales. Well over a thousand bucks CAD though.
$1850 @ 21 years
SteamDB says an account value of $4017 and $6438 USD in today's prices, over the course of 21.4 years. I've transitioned my new purchases to GOG when possible.
$6,227 per SteamDB
2,900 CAD apparently
Apparently about $1000, which feels like a lot until I see some of the bananas-ass responses here.
If it helps, my total spend is listed at 7964 USD
So, that's fun!
I believe it's over 20 years now. I got the account when half life 2 came out. But I don't game all that much since 10+ years ago.
If they take Arc Raiders away from me, I'm going to lose my mind.
£1094, or £2055 today (15 year account).
Rookie numbers, looking at the other replies.
Hardly any of you actually buy games? Geez. I mean, congrats as I know I've spent far too much over the years, especially compared to the amount of time I actually spend gaming. So mainly I'm proud of your resilience.
US$7374 (AU$10721) over the last 10 years - but most of that in the last 5. Was a console gamer mostly before that so have more spent on console games over the years too.
Probably over 10k CAD. Not sure how old the account Is but it's quite old.
I found a purchase history page in the client, so it might be able to tell you how old an account might be by scrolling all the way down. IDK how far back it goes, though, since my account is only a little over 12 years old.
store(.)steampowered(.)om/account/history
Over 12 years, apparently only ~$1255.33USD over the past 12 years. Also realized I have a huge gap in my purchase history from 2015 to 2020. And it looks like the majority of my spending has been from 2020 onward.
Gonna have a presume at least a little over a quarter of my spending is due to me buying an officially refurbished LCD model deck when they were in stock a couple years ago. IDK actual price because it's lumped in with like 3-4 games I bought at the same time, roughing out to $403.something-cents before tax.
I have FTL and Into The Breach installed so even if the rest of my library vanishes I think I'll be alright.
Probably close to $1,500.
$1320.15 USD or like £988 GBP over the last 7 years damn-
That's like £150 a year-
Bet most are unplayed too because I rack up hundreds of hours on a couple of games then forget about the rest oops. I gotta start going through my backlog.
Edit: according to https://help.steampowered.com/en/accountdata/AccountSpend
I have spent $7664 apparently.
Zero. I cannot convert these games to money anyway.
Like 20$ i guess.
Probably like 5k over 15 yrs
I don't even have a steam account ...
Is this thread really for you then?
I don't see why not.
Because you don't have a Steam account.
Right, so I'd lost $0, which is valid answer to the question being asked.
Wow that's impressive
This has Ken M energy and I love it.
No, it has typical Lemmy "I'm too good for x, y, z" energy.
There could be a thread "Girls, why do.you do this?" and some dude will show up "I don't do this because I'm a guy."
The internet is like 80% people saying shit for no good reason; full of contrarians, the dumbest motherfuckers that confuse thinking the opposite of the majority with critical thinking and developing an opinion.
I think we've found one of those mythical people that reply to questions people ask online with "I don't know".
everyone else sees "why not". lol
Damn, infinity dollars. You got me beat
According to Steam, ive spent $1440 dollars over 13 years.
Thing is, I have 930 games.
And while I pride myself on only buying during sales or other massive discounts, an average of $1.54 per game seems extremely low to me.
Nor does the fact that even when factoring in my supposed savings, i would have spend only 4.76 per game if not on sale especially since I have a fair number of AAA games on the account.
So im not sure steam is tracking me accurately.
If you went hard on the early humble bundles and also subscribed to humble monthly for a while it's possible
Thats the thing. I didn't.
I did spend a while near addicted to Fanaticals mystery bundles though.
But even so, those often wound up being duplicates so I didn't get as many games as you might expect
I don't get the question.
The money is gone now, so it's already "lost".
Or do you mean how many games did I buy that I have never played? That is an interesting metric I guess.
You get the question, you're just criticizing it.
Ok, then the question didn't need the extra fluff:
How much have you spent on steam. Is that what they want to know?
Confirming what I said. We both know that's exactly what they asked.
Congratulations. You ignored the interesting part and killed the chance of a conversation about it.
How pedantic of you.
I truly didn't understand the point of this question worded this way.
Good job.
Lmao... Satirizing yourself?
Keeps going.
Zero
Lost? Not really any. I've replaced everything I can on GOG, and replaced what I can't with pirate copies.
The 2GB RAM usage of a client that does no more than spam me with irrelevant recommendation isn't worth it now that I can't just slap another 16 in there for the heck of it.
I moved the "common" folder installations out, tried launching them all directly, anything that did not force Steam to open or scream that it wasn;t running I kept official and made a backup. Anything that did I dumped and yarred the games I already owned.
My Steam library is something like 1500 games, spent a lot replacing console stuff when I moved to PC, but now I consider it to have been a mistake. I just don't trust Valve anymore, simply being better than Ubislop and BiowEAr isn't enough, with ho the state of gaming is shifting to be completely anti-consumer. We're not the customer there, we're the product, proven by how a publisher can add DRM after launch, or break a game and force out an update, and Valve will demand that we accept this no matter how bad it is.
The Steam client has never used 2GB of RAM.
Maybe in the orange box era? Did we even have that much memory back then? /s
The PS3, which had hardware a bit ahead of the curve when it launched in late 2006, had a whopping 512MB of RAM.
So 2GB would have been relatively beefy specs in comparison when The Orange Box released the following year. 4GB would be excessive.
I recall the PC I built in 2011 for Skyrim had 4GB of RAM and I thought that was great at the time. A lot of games (Skyrim included) were 32-bit applications at launch and were limited in terms of the total RAM they could utilize, so 4GB was the cap for a lot of titles until 64-bit support became more commonplace.
Jesus christ I forgot what dark times those were. Just checked and indeed min memory was 512MB for Half life 2
Goddamn kids these days don't know how good they got it (ignoring all the other stuff going on right now)
I remember the first PC I built to play Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind, which I installed to my amazing 40GB hard drive. I think Morrowind alone ended up using 10GB of that with all the mods I had.
My current computer has 32GB of RAM, so I have almost as much RAM as I used to have storage back then. I could save Morrowind plus mods onto a RAM disk if I wanted to and just play the whole thing on memory.
When I was a kid, we used to have to walk uphill, in snow, somehow both ways, to figure out which voodoo configuration of DMA, IRQ, and free vs high memory settings was needed to be able to play a game.
Sitting at 1.4, right now, which is more than every other part of my system unless I'm using plasma crap on the desktop.
That's double Heroic, more than Heroic and Itch put together, and you could almost throw in Luitris (Before I dumped it thanks to Claude) and still use less RAM than Steam.
Maybe they just suck at Linux? You'd think not, since they pretty much own the backend now with proton, but it's sure the least efficient and most obnoxious piece of software I have dealt with.
1.4 is significantly less than 2.
Currently running at, meaning at that exact moment, in the background with no game playing or service running.
This, for those who have trouble with the English language, means that it is a current snapsot of usage not a record drain on resources.
I understand that, I just don't see much reason for it to vary wildly unless it's processing shaders or something which wouldn't really be a fair reading of its resource usage.
Honestly think Steam should run a daemon, not a client. Their store is just fine in a browser, not everything needs to have integrated everything in it.
Same for GOG, though, Galaxy is a hog but unlike Steam it is optional. Comet does everything Galaxy needs to do, for almost no resource usage, and there could be something similar for Steam put together by valve by the end of the week if they chose to do it.
Executable params may work on some games installed through steam, like
--nosteametc.Then you just create a simple bash script (or lnk or whatever if you still use windows shudder) and always launch with that param instead.
None because I don't buy games with unbroken DRM (including the need for corporate-run servers) and therefore can always get 'em all back via piracy.
10-20$