“Don’t even want to know”

Games upon games as far as the eye can see. If you've been in the business for a few years as a gamer, then you'll have accumulated a whole lot of titles in the respective libraries on Steam, Gog, Epic and Co., all of which you really wanted to have – and a few new ones are added with every sale.

A lot has come together over the years.

Last Tuesday we showed you a way to see how much your digital game shelf is actually worth. And we asked you in a survey what the total was.

Now the results of our survey are in – and admittedly they surprised us. Because we never in our lives would have expected such large sums to be raised! When we determined the answer options, we used over 5,000 euros Stopped. In retrospect, the scale could have been significantly higher.

The results in detail

But let's start at the bottom: The bargain hunters among you had a close race. 13 percent (around 440 participants) said since their Steam account was created under 500 euros or under 1,000 euros to have spent on games on the platform.

When you consider that many users have been on Steam for over twelve years, that doesn't seem like much at first. If we assume 1,000 euros, that would be just 83 euros per year for games over a 12-year term. So roughly a new AAA title and a few smaller things on sale.

The users who spent between 1,000 and 2,000 euros follow with 605 votes. There is significantly more leeway in the budget here, especially for more expensive games and purchases right after the release. However, if you only buy on sale, you can fill up your Steam library with 2,000 euros.

The results of the Steam survey in detail. Around a third of users voted for 5,000 euros and more.

927 participants in our survey were between 2,000 and 5,000 euros, which corresponds to 27 percent. With these amounts, gaming is no longer just a small side hobby, but rather important part of leisure activities. For the same money you could have had a really fast gaming computer.

Oh, that hurts!

Finally, around a third of you said that you had spent more than 5,000 euros since you created your Steam account to have left on the sales platform – a whole lot of money. If we follow our example calculation again for twelve years, this would result in a budget of at least 416 euros per year just for Steam games.

For comparison: For 5,000 euros you could have bought three gaming PCs worth around 1,650 euros. For many users, the budget was apparently far higher. It's hardly surprising that some people were quite shocked by their spending in the comments.

For example, user The M-Man wrote: $24,082.58, excluding keys and bundles… ohh wow, that hurts. Others, however, already suspected something bad and avoided looking at the Steam editions. Marduk, for example, wrote: Oh no, I don't even want to know!

Overall, it should be remembered once again that the significance of these figures is limited. The internal account history only shows you the purchases you made directly on Steam. Spending on key sites, in retail or other shops such as GOG, PSN or Origin will not be added up.

It's difficult to get a true total of how much you've invested in games over the course of your life. However, we guarantee you one thing: it will probably be significantly higher!

Would you like to see more community surveys like this on GameStar.de? Feel free to write it to us in the comments!