Nobody ever releases digital sales numbers on PC. Least of all Valve. Still, that hasn’t stopped Ars Technica from rolling up their sleeves and getting the data themselves.
Trawling through thousands upon thousands of public profiles to gain user data, they have compiled a list that, minuscule margins of error aside, gives us our first ever look at what the most popular games are on Steam, how many people own them and how many games they’re actually playing.
You need to go read the whole thing, because it’s fascinating. Sure, DOTA 2 dominates many categories in raw numbers, but it’s free and it’s a little misleading. You’ll find that Football Manager and Civ V are right up there in terms of time wasted/marriages threatened.
The most reassuring thing the study finds is that a lot of people are buying games they don’t play, whether during sales, as part of bundles, or both. Take a look below, and if you’re part of that 36.9%, know you’re not alone.
Introducing Steam Gauge: Ars reveals Steam’s most popular games [Ars Technica]
Comments
18 responses to “Steam’s Most Popular (And Unloved) Games”
DoTA 2 dominates because valve forced it into everyone’s steam library.
It might also dominate because it’s consistently the most played game on Steam, by a large margin. Source: http://store.steampowered.com/stats/
Got forced into my Steam library too, along with Dota 2 beta. If Steam allowed you to delete games they’d be the first to go for me, never opened either of them and no intention to.
Then you are missing out. I have personally clocked up over 1500 hours on my copy of Dota 2. It is easily the most played game I have on steam and I own over 300 titles. There’s a reason it’s becoming the next big thing in e-sports… It’s an amazing brilliant game!
I’m a full time uni student with a job, long term relationship and other interests outside gaming. I used to love Counter-Strike ten years ago but I simply don’t have time for super competitive (repetitive) games like that any more. Not to mention games with such awful communities!
I’ve played DoTA for maybe 100 hours all told, but not one of them enjoyed with people online. Even playing with my nephew was tragic and he acted like a ninny, which he doesn’t in other games (he’s 20). So you’re right. It’s a time sink, and the community is horrible.
Same here – I even ended up disabling the auto-updates, because shoving a GB every day on DOTA updates through the network is not my idea of spending my download quota.
You can email them and have them delete it from your library – I had to do this with a region locked version of the Hitman Sniper Challenge someone gave me a key for.
I’d bet a lot of those never played games are the result of things like the humblebundle, many’s the time I’ve bought one of those for a single game and the rest have just sat in my library untouched
Most of my unplayed games were either humble bundle titls I never intended to play (or gave an hour or two to wow me that didn’t) or were part of a larger bundle. I mean, I paid $70 for a Bethesda/Quakecon pack a few years ago because it included Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 3 with DLC, every Quake, Commander Keen, etc. But am I really gonna play Hexen anytime soon?
It’s funny, I bought that Quakecon pack too and played Hexen literally just yesterday for the first time since buying it.
Hahaha, I actually installed it last week thinking I might give it a try then got distraacted by XCom.
My “never played” percentage is over 80%!
You need to find more time in your life to play video games. Stop going to work/school and stop hanging out with friends until you have finished every single game that you own.
Motherfreakin Ricochet.
Where’s our sequel dammit Gabe? It’d be a 2, so there’s no reason to be scared!
Looking at the first few that aren’t FREE… and all is right with the world.
Quite interesting that only two in that list are actually unrelated to valve, the rest being either published/developed by Valve, or a mod for their games.
Hmm what is this “Half Life 2” game that is so prevalent in the list? I guess the game must really suck. Why else would a gaming company abandon something that is so popular? 😛