I genuinely don’t get the patience. You certainly didn’t spend the C64 era with five games on that thing. Nobody who had access to a double deck tape recorder did.

And these days if you like “replay value” to that degree there’s a ton of free to play grind treadmills. In eight years I’d expect you’d have at least tried a dozen of those. That’s less than one new game a year. If you play just two hours a week that’s both a bit of a stretch on “game lover” (more of a “very strict parents heavily monitoring their kid” range) and still hundreds of hours on each of those.

I’m not judging. Games are a thing where habits can be very different, it’s just… a bit of a extreme.

I’m curious, what games are those? What types of games do you find simultaneously engaging and all-consuming enough to spend a decade in just a handful? That’s not a challenge, I’m genuinely asking. Is it fighting games? MOBAs? Definitely not a linear narrative beginning-to-end thing, right? Are you full on speedrunning them at this point or getting really competitive?

You admit to buying stuff knowing there’s an 80% chance you never touch it.

Nope, you failed to read what I wrote.

I said I’ve played 22% of my Steam library and 25% of my GOG library.

I also said, at various points, that I’m deliberately pacing myself through my backlog. I have already played around 2,000 titles, and I will be playing more.

Will I be playing all titles I own? Yes, at my own pace, with my own methodology.

I’m not one to shame steam libraries, mine is certainly lopsided in playtime, but if you’re in it for collecting and preserving hidden gems just pirate.

Nope, I’m in it for the collecting and the playing.

You’ll no longer be locked in to Steam and if you like a game you can still buy it at full price and give the devs more than pennies.

I’ve never had a Steam game removed from my account due to DRM. And should that ever happen, I have games on GOG that are DRM-free.

But also, I have downloaded and installed several abandonware titles in the past. I find piracy an inconvenient hassle. Both Steam and GOG give me the convenience of cloud storage, which I’m happy to pay less than a dollar for.

Basically, your entire comment boils down to you disapproving of how I enjoy games.

I paid an average price of $0.58 for 226 games—which is the price of a dinner at a restaurant.

Not sure why you got downvoted, it’s a legit question. C64 was double tape deck, and then QuikCopy on the diskette drive…so many games, that I spent too much time gaming.

But a few examples of now: WRC there are enough stages and cars and can try for better stage times / try to beat your ghost car etc.

MechWarrior 5 Mercenaries, which has a story arc but once you finish the story you can just keep traveling to look for new contracts, some with difficulty so high you lose a lot of equipment and almost become bankrupt / stranded, so there is always an element of risk. Also some generated worlds/scemery are just gorgeous for exploring. I have hit some game awards only 4% of players worldwide have.

But last few years my time is on MudRunners. (Shit sorry this got way to long)… If you havent tried it: Once you complete the tutorial tasks and a few main maps the game opens up into more freedom, and the tasks and terrain can be challenging. If you burn through that there is a mod community that has built so many more maps, vehicles and challenges.

If you have never played, the initial game is drab Russian vehicles and limited colour pallette scenes, where the goal is finding logs or picking up logs from key areas and delivering them to the saw mill across swampy and muddy maps. The physics are amazing for the terrain, as you drive over areas you are morphing the soft terrains and changing traction. Drive in same area too much or without 4wd engaged and you can easily bury your truck up to the axles, so you then have to hope there is a tree nearby that you can attach your winch to and try to pull yourself out. Sometimes you can’t so you have to drive out another vehicle and do a tow out.

The American truckers DLC adds more maps and vehicles and brightens up the scenery. Same game play, different challenges. More variety.

The time in game is sped up for day night cycle, but if you are able to load the logs into your truck or trailer you have to now drive them to the log station, either over hilly fireroads roads, or through forested areas, and cross rivers. There is no timewarp. Its precarious, with janky bridges, and deep water. Wheel placement, 4WD and posi traction locks on/off are needed to navigate out of areas. Managing a load down a grade where hillside camber wants to flip your truck means attaching the winch to side of truck on up hill tree to stop you rolling as you look for a down hilltree to lean truck body against to look for next anchor tree up hill. So it can take you hours to drive 1 mile. A tree breaks or you steer to hard and your truck is on its side and stalled, so you have to drive a rescue vehicle out to try to flip it back on its wheels.

You also have to manage fuel, 4wd and spinning in mud burns through it so fast, so getting a fuel tanker truck setup in a strategic spot so you make less long runs back to a fuel station is key.

Wow, I typed a lot. But seriously I can launch this at 11pm Friday night when wife has gone to bed, and get so engrossed that the sun will start rising Saturday.
And crossing a slanted plank bridge with a huge tank of a specialized russian logging vehicle can have my palms sweating on the controller and holding my breath. One wrong tire placement or miscalculation of how much the truck will slide and you are down in the river watching your logs float away and in fast water watching the truck be dragged down the river. Damage and abuse will degrade the truck, bringing a utility or garage trailer is often required to fix the truck in field. So the game has elements of planning, resource management, goals, understanding wheel placement of off roaring.

But sometimes its just the beauty of driving out of the forest and the mist clears and sun is coming up over the hill, because some mod ad one are gorgeous.

The grappler arm log loader is also fun to operate. And sometimes its marvelling at the effort the devs went to to get soft physics right. You can swap views and see front of truck or Jeeps wheels smushing the mud as you plow forward (and accumulating mud on tires which affects grip), not too much wheel spin or you sink too much, and find out the reason you did get stuck is there is a large rock buried under the mud and its not until you get in the right position that your tire catches the rock and actually rolls it slightly to clear the underbody that you can move on.

So if you have patience for it and free time this game can fill a lot of it. LOL

I got downvoted? I guess that’s just a reminder to not trust anything you see on a federated app other than the text of the post. That’s not what it looks like on my side.

Anyway, Mudrunners is definitely a big time sink, but even there I’m surprised you never considered moving on to Snowruner or any of the spinoffs, or, I don’t know, the Dakar game they made at some point, if you are into WRC. That’s a surprising amount of passion and loyalty, but also of outright satisfaction with getting that version of that thing and never going back to the well.

Which is fine, it’s legitimate, it’s just a bit of an outlier way to go about it. Even the dudebros that only bought Madden/Fifa and Call of Duty bought those every year or every other year. The people who only played WoW or The Sims bought all the expansions or the characters in a fighting game. You are unusually focused, is what I’m saying.

My apologies, 76%

Do you have a goal where you’ll stop and catch up? More games are being released than ever, if you get every deal you see those numbers won’t meaningfully converge.

I’ve never had a Steam game removed from my account due to DRM. And should that ever happen, I have games on GOG that are DRM-free.

It’s not just DRM, the platforms have carte blanche to change the terms of your license at any time. For example, they could start charging per download, completely remove offline library access, remove/censor games, delete your account at any time, etc… Gaben pinky promising to release all games DRM free if Steam goes under isn’t the same as having them.

Inheriting a Steam library is already against TOS, if they start strictly enforcing that your collection dies with you. GoG is slightly better at the moment, but only if you download all games on purchase (the DRM policy could change at any time).

I don’t personally pirate, but it’s the only way to really ensure access and ownership of your library. The hassle factor was true, but there are a lot of new tools in the space that make managing a library painless (a quick search shows Playnite as the game library equivalent of Plex/Jellyfin).

And all of that is putting aside the fair-value argument for creators. They’re getting ~$0.40 from your purchase, not enough to sustain themselves unless they have a massive number of sales.

By all means, enjoy your library and deal hunting games, but your methods run counter to your stated goals.

If Valve does something evil, then I’ll adjust when that time comes. For now, I have full access to my entire library, and this has been the case for the past 12 years I’ve had my account.

As far as I’m concerned, you’re thinking so hard about the legal risks of buying games legally, you’re not taking into account the legal risks of piracy.

You think game publishers haven’t sued the living tar out of pirates?

There’s a guy named Gary Bowser who was sent to prison for selling tools that hacked the Nintendo Switch. And when he got out, he still owed $10M.

So if you’re worried about risk, at least acknowledge where the real hammer comes down.

Of course it’s collecting. But it’s like underwear collecting: you don’t resell it.

Sure, there are risks both ways but one can be mitigated more than the other. The piracy hammer has always come down on distributors with very rare exceptions. With proper precautions (VPN, usenet, foreign seedbox, etc…) nobody would ever know or care about the private individual self hosting a media server on a closet raspberry pie.

Legally you’re covered with Steam but you have very little actual control over your collection. The ideal is legal physical media that you can digitally copy and store but that’s basically impossible these days.

You’ve gotta shake off this weird myth that price equals quality. I picked up Quake 4 and Return to Castle Wolfenstein for $0.64 each. If that’s slop, hand me a spoon.

You still spent less than buying two AAA at release

This month, I bought 226 PC games for C$185.82 ($134.58)

Now are those a lot of games? Yes, it’s a silly amount of games. Perhaps I’m addicted to good deals that deliver fun.

We all have a vice, and this is mine. I don’t drink, or smoke, or gamble – but I buy lots and lots of video games.

Though back when I was a console gamer, I’d might get eight games for that price – if I were lucky.