Don’t just open it, see thousands of dollars spent, react like it is some huge expenditure and close it without thinking things through. Don’t forget that the account is years old and when you do some simple division it going to come out to $30 a month or some number that is reasonable for you to spend on a hobby that you have spent hundreds to thousands of hours enjoying.
I also pro-rate the value of my games like this. For instance, Helldivers 2: paid $39.99 (€35,76), played 537 hours. That’s $0.001 (€0,0012) or 1/10th of a cent per hour of play. Even if I add $2000 (€1.788,61) for the PC I play on that still only comes to $3.79 (€4.24) an hour.
Hard to beat that price per hour of entertainment.
My Steam spend over the lifetime of my account comes to $25 (€27,97) a month which is a decent monthly entertainment cost. Of course that doesn’t account for additional spending on other entertainment but putting the total spent amount in perspective is definitely good to do, so thanks for pointing that out for those who need it.
For context, my account is over 15 years old, it has over $6k spent, and almost all of that is in the last decade. And it still comes out to under $50 a month, with thousands of hours played across a bunch of games.
For comparison, I know people who spend much more on their hobbies with car, bicycle, home theater equipment, etc. each year
I also have an old account with ~$6,000 USD on it. I don’t worry about it so much. Also, I don’t think it includes when a game was purchased on sale, because on my account I have one of the Star Wars mega bundles that came with like 20 classic Star Wars games, but it says it was like $220 or something. I absolutely bought it when it was on sale, and not when it was full priced, because that money would fund Disney and I don’t want to fund Disney any more than I feel is absolutely necessary. So some of the prices may not be reliable with what was actually spent. (After manually adding up the purchase, I only spent ~$59 USD on the bundle which I bought in 2018).
By comparison, I have put ~$10,000 USD into my car, with $7,000 on the engine alone. So seeing the $6,000 might have been scary initially, but given the value of the dollar, I am kinda surprised the number wasn’t bigger.
Also, my account is old enough that it doesn’t include anything from before 2016? or some year like that.
When I calculate the “time of fun per euro spent” I’m always shocked how cheap videogames are. Even something like the new Doom, which is 70 euros for 16 hours of play, comes down to €4.40 per hour (or just under 14 minutes per euro). And we consider that ridiculously expensive for a “short” game.
Try doing anything for < €5 per hour.
Then I look at something like Warhammer total war, and I’m up to 132 minutes per euro spent
There is also the cost of power and computer hardware to factor in, which probably raises the barrier to entry, but you’re right. Once you have all the equipment or have it anyway for other purposes, it’s very cheap.
I’ve had my account since Portal was released, so that’s around 20 years ago? Frankly I’d be shocked if I’ve spent even $1k and over 20 years? That doesn’t sound too bad. Almost everything I’ve bought has been on sale, or fairly inexpensive to begin with.
People need to stop acting like it’s some scary thing to know.
https://help.steampowered.com/en/accountdata/AccountSpend
Don’t just open it, see thousands of dollars spent, react like it is some huge expenditure and close it without thinking things through. Don’t forget that the account is years old and when you do some simple division it going to come out to $30 a month or some number that is reasonable for you to spend on a hobby that you have spent hundreds to thousands of hours enjoying.
I also pro-rate the value of my games like this. For instance, Helldivers 2: paid $39.99 (€35,76), played 537 hours. That’s $0.001 (€0,0012) or 1/10th of a cent per hour of play. Even if I add $2000 (€1.788,61) for the PC I play on that still only comes to $3.79 (€4.24) an hour.
Hard to beat that price per hour of entertainment.
My Steam spend over the lifetime of my account comes to $25 (€27,97) a month which is a decent monthly entertainment cost. Of course that doesn’t account for additional spending on other entertainment but putting the total spent amount in perspective is definitely good to do, so thanks for pointing that out for those who need it.
Edit: added € costs
For context, my account is over 15 years old, it has over $6k spent, and almost all of that is in the last decade. And it still comes out to under $50 a month, with thousands of hours played across a bunch of games.
For comparison, I know people who spend much more on their hobbies with car, bicycle, home theater equipment, etc. each year
I also have an old account with ~$6,000 USD on it. I don’t worry about it so much. Also, I don’t think it includes when a game was purchased on sale, because on my account I have one of the Star Wars mega bundles that came with like 20 classic Star Wars games, but it says it was like $220 or something. I absolutely bought it when it was on sale, and not when it was full priced, because that money would fund Disney and I don’t want to fund Disney any more than I feel is absolutely necessary. So some of the prices may not be reliable with what was actually spent. (After manually adding up the purchase, I only spent ~$59 USD on the bundle which I bought in 2018).
By comparison, I have put ~$10,000 USD into my car, with $7,000 on the engine alone. So seeing the $6,000 might have been scary initially, but given the value of the dollar, I am kinda surprised the number wasn’t bigger.
Also, my account is old enough that it doesn’t include anything from before 2016? or some year like that.
One could probably also factor in hardware costs. But over years it may not be as bad as suspected like you’re expressing.
When I calculate the “time of fun per euro spent” I’m always shocked how cheap videogames are. Even something like the new Doom, which is 70 euros for 16 hours of play, comes down to €4.40 per hour (or just under 14 minutes per euro). And we consider that ridiculously expensive for a “short” game.
Try doing anything for < €5 per hour.
Then I look at something like Warhammer total war, and I’m up to 132 minutes per euro spent
There is also the cost of power and computer hardware to factor in, which probably raises the barrier to entry, but you’re right. Once you have all the equipment or have it anyway for other purposes, it’s very cheap.
Yeah, but that’s mostly because it’s lumpsum. Over time, it’s not much at all.
I’ve had my account since Portal was released, so that’s around 20 years ago? Frankly I’d be shocked if I’ve spent even $1k and over 20 years? That doesn’t sound too bad. Almost everything I’ve bought has been on sale, or fairly inexpensive to begin with.