'Oh god': There's a buried Steam help page that shows how much money you've ever spent on the platform, and you may not want to know
'Oh god': There's a buried Steam help page that shows how much money you've ever spent on the platform, and you may not want to know
There's a web tool that estimates the value of your Steam account by looking at all the games you own, but it can't tell you how precisely much you've actually spent on Valve's wallet-plundering platform, microtransactions and all.
If you bought on sales or Humble Bundles then this number will be so far off its useless. If you only buy new and retail then I feel bad for you sucker.
After many years of selectively evaluating and purchasing bundles as my main source of new games, I've come to wonder if it would've been better to just buy the individual games when I wanted to play them at whatever the available price was - the rate at which I get through games is far lower than the rate at which games are available in "good" bundles. In the end I'm not even sure if I've saved money (because of how many games have been bought but are as-of-yet unplayed) and it does take more time to evaluate whether something's a good deal or not.
The upside is way more potential variety of games to pull from in my library, but if I only play at most like 1-2 dozen new games a year then I'm not sure that counts for much 🫠
A bit tangential, but I also feel a lot of people make the same mistake with GamePass. I buy a lot of gameson release day (mostly indies, but also some AAA), so theoretically I should be the target audience for GamePass, but I did the math once for a three-month period and came out at a loss if I had bought GamePass.
Based on nothing but anecdotal evidence, the type of person to get GamePass also typically enjoys a lesser variety of games on average, making the cost/benefit ratio even worse.
I let the charity be the deciding factor. Some times I will just get a bundle and move the sliders all the way over for EFF because I would have donated to them anyways. Other times I see that the cause (relief, children, etc) is just worth doing. If I don't play the games, at least the money was not wasted.
That's exactly why the next paragraph tells you how to find "External funds used" deep in the Steam Help menu...
Home - > Account - > Purchase History
I don't know why you would use a third Party Tool that estimates your purchases, when it has always been right there in your account, without estimates.
Main reason for me is that I have bought humble bundles, donated to gamejams, and gotten keys off of legit and grey-market sites in the past in conjunction with buying directly from Steam. Those aren't included in the Steam spend category.
The tool doesn’t know how much you paid for it, though, so it's completely ignoring sales, donations and in app purchases, and just applies a price to it.
You should look at the External Funds thing mentioned in the article. It gives a different spending breakdown than Purchase History.
Help > Steam support > My account > Data related to your Steam account > External funds used. (Its the 13th item on a huge page full of stuff.)
This isn't a 3rd party tool, it's a separate Steam Support page that lists your total purchases. It basically takes the data from the Purchase History section (assuming that you usually pay directly and not using Steam gift cards) and totals it so that you don't have to do that manually.
It's been known for atleast 7 years: https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/8m9fxm/what_is_difference_between_totalspend_and_oldspend/
edit: no need to point out those are 2 different links, ill leave this up
To judge my friends, of course.
Legit
$666 for 71 games.
Patient gamer reporting in.
Devil gamer confirmed 😈
Oh damn. I've spent $30,359.76 on Steam in the 17 years I've had an account. And I just passed 4,000 games in my Steam library within the last month. That checks out.
What is wrong with you? Have you even played 10% of those games?
I really like video games. And I'm retired young(ish), so I have all the time in the world to game now.
Plus, I have a (relatively new) blog dedicated to introducing games to people, which encourages me to play through a variety of games in my library. It's basically just archiving my "Random Screenshots of my Games" posts in !games@lemmy.world.
And according to the SteamDB, I've played 26% of my games. The last time I checked, it was at 38%, but that was maybe 2,000 games ago. I need to keep working through my library!
Nice. Lucky! i would have spend more also if it wasnt for my pesky family /s
Unfortunately it appears to be in some ancient arcane language whose mysteries appear to have been lost to time.
$3643.42 USD
I have 1139 games. Had the account for 20+ years. Most of the games are from humblebundle and according to anothet website that goes off of retail prices, total would be over $15k.
Wow, I'm at ~$3800 and have 535 games on a 15-ish year account, you've done good for yourself. I've also brought in some games from humble bundles, but if I have to guess these total 20% of my purchases at most.
what's that other site? I'm in the same boat and very curious what the retail value of my steam library would be
edit: nvm, it would help if I read the article :)
Seems some are confusing the third party estimator with the official page. This is the official page: https://help.steampowered.com/en/accountdata/AccountSpend
The official page shows the money you've spent, the estimator shows the current price of the games on your account, adjusted to everything. For me the difference is X4
No, the article specifically mentions on how to get to this site from the steam client.
Yeah but the article links the steamdb calulator twice and the actual steam page not at all. Freaking weird.
I don't feel bad. It's a big number, but it was spread out over 20 years. I'm sure I'd be shocked at a lot of numbers amalgamated over 20 years.
I got Steam so I could play Half Life 2 when it was released. May 4, 2006. 153 games. $1,725 spent.
This thing about not owning the games ... um ... Steam is a more reliable, stable, all around better repository for my games than any device I've ever owned. Other than the Ubisoft games that are designed to not be re-usable (never buy Ubi again) I have access to every game I've bothered to spend money on for the last two decades.
My 17-year-old account is at $600. That's an average of $35 per year.
Most of my gaming spending for the last 8 years has been on Nintendo Switch. That number is too embarrassing to post.
$7000... not bad for 20 years or whatever its been since steam started. Sure as hell drunk more than 7k's worth of alcohol over that time lol
Your profile page will say your account birthday. Float your mouse over "Years of Service".
20 years for me. 2004... Interesting times then and still interesting times now lol.
21 years on Steam was terrifying to see.
Yep. I've known about this feature for a while. I always think my numbers are insane and someone always comes along and one ups me so while I'm near the right end of the bell curve, I'm by no means at the end.
Dang, everyone else here has 4 or 5 figures while I'm sitting at $101. And I know for a fact 40% of that was Kerbal Space Program.
Invest!
$602.41 for 50 games in 18.4 years. Cost at today's prices: $698. I'd say that's a win.
2,095 hours. 72% of games played. Guess I need to get to work.
I wish I could track my pre-steam numbers. Id be interested to see how much time I put into Mechwarrior 3, or Rollercoaster Tycoon, or Unreal Tournament.
$11,000 over twenty years. Jesus.
I‘ve basically spent 17 bucks a month for 650 games and countless hours of fun, it‘s alright. I‘d be way more disappointed with myself if I looked at my League spending
Humble Monthly is awesome.
I had to remember that I bought an Index and Steam Deck on Steam so that has definitely inflated the amount I’ve spent compared to the 3rd party valuation lol
It's not wasted if you've enjoyed
6.5k in 15 years. I did spend a lot when I was younger.
I'm at about the same amount. Kinda shocking to see it.
Considering I have 827 games on Steam, the figure of $1620.26 doesn't seem too bad. Now I've probably bought a load more bundles bumping that up, but there's no convenient way to figure out how much that adds (let's round to $2000). I've had the account 18 years, 9 months.
So that's... $8.89 per month.
Yeah, that seems pretty reasonable.
If you dig you can find this on Amazon. I've been buying from Amazon since 1995 and the last time I looked my purchases were somewhere around $260,000. And that was before covid.
Do you have a link? I'll start looking, will edit this comment if I find it.
Edit: Link to Steam total spend: https://help.steampowered.com/en/accountdata/AccountSpend
Edit: This seems to be how to do it for Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/hz/privacy-central/data-requests/preview.html - My data hasn't come through yet so I don't know how difficult it is to get the sum of all orders/refunds.
Woo $6k!
Holy balls
I did pretty good. So far 530 games for $1867
That's about $3.50 per game
I often leave games in my wishlist until they are 70-80% off
1300$ in 17 years. Around 1200 games. I think I probably spent more elsewhere and got steam keys. I still have a physical copy of portal 2, which was cheaper at release than on steam and had a key inside haha. Good times.
$1300 CAD on games over 15+ years with a current value of $8350.
Yeah, I'm cool with that.
Not bad, under $9000! I thought for sure it would be over 10k. I'm at 2k games, and I almost always buy on sale.
21 years, $4000, 1381 games, 29% avg completion rate. I’m not unhappy with that
21 years? a veteran 🫡
$1,100 over 15 years. I'm not a gamer, and I'm well aware I don't own these games, so I'm glad it's low
Meh. You were late to the party. Musta got Steam to play Half Life Episode Two or Portal.
Yeah it was portal! Good guess
3465 € in 21 years at today's prices for 287 games. Given that I mostly buy at historical lows the estimate of 1033 € that can be found on the same SteamDB page applies to me.
3,6 € per game, 49 € per year.
Given the tears, the emotions and the joy I got repeatedly from all those (mostly indie) titles, it's well worth it. Praised be GabeN and all of Valve!
Oh, it's not too bad. Rounds up to $60 a year and averages out to about $15 per game.
Surprised to see I've only spent 1200€ in 20 years. That is value for money IMO
If your account is less than about 5 years old (and you live in the US) you can also just look at the points shop. Each Steam Point corresponds to one cent spent on Steam.
Yeah but I spent a bunch of them
The shop has a page where it tells you how many you've spent as well.
Not too bad!
This is not the tally that the article is talking about though
Oh I checked. If was so much
$130 over 14 years. 🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
530 dollars for 251 games in almost 22 years of service. Steam only logged about 210 hours in those years, which is bullshit. There's almost no time recorded in Half-life, Day of defeat or Counterstrike and those are the games I played the most. I also got most games through Humblebundle, where I spent 270 dollars since June 2012. But as I haven't been playing much on PC ever since the PS3 came out, the real money went to Sony and I don't even want to know.
$1118 over 15+ years isn't too bad
€15.77 on a 5 year old account
I own Terraria, Among Us, BTD6, Celeste and Gelatine, all bought on a discount
Outside of steam i own minecraft and the mobile version of BTD6 and have only once pirated a game that i actually played
Why play other games when you have modded minecraft and terraria
Well not how much you've spent, how much it values your collection. But what's that number based on? I've only bought one full price game in my entire life on Steam. And it was one of my biggest regrets so I'm not doing that again. So right there all the sale prices I'm paying aren't being calculated right? Then there's the case of free games and humble bundles, back when they were awesome. Hell probably a third to half of the games I have in my Steam account either came from Humble bundles or free giveaways.
SteamDB gives you a valuation based on full price. The article describes an entry on Steam's Help page that gives you an accurate number of how much money you paid to Valve, including micro-transactions.
Well not how much you’ve spent, how much it values your collection. But what’s that number based on?
Please re-read the article. The values are on Steam itself, based on your interactions with it.
This site puts my lowest cost estimate at ~$400 USD. Out of curiosity, I then went through my purchase history and added everything up, which came out to ~$1,000 USD. The average was ~$14 and the median was ~$10.
TotalSpend 1433$ OldSpend 434$
Not sure if I should add the two ? or is the second one included in the first one ? Anyway that's not too bad for a 14yo account
It's formatted weird on the Steam page but I have this text at the top.
"TotalSpend" is the total amount of external funds applied to your account. This value is used to determine if an account is a "Limited User Account".
"OldSpend" is the amount of external funds applied before Friday, April 17, 2015 18:00:00 UTC. If your account was linked to Perfect World for CS:GO or Dota 2,
"PWSpend" will be the approximate USD value of funds applied from Perfect World, otherwise that value will be zero. If your account has applied external funds in Steam China,
"ChinaSpend" will report that total, in RMB.
Weirdly I also have a row for "PackageOnlySpend" that doesn't have a definition.
Yea same, I don't know what that last one is. So Total is the total, and Old is the part of the total that was applied before april 17th 2015. I think it makes sense. About 100$ a year, or roughly 8$ a month. I was afraid what I'd find tbh
"May" nothing, I don't.
Less than 1000€ for dozens of games I've played, I think the average price I payed is 15€, so I don't feel robbed
I mostly buy on GOG whenever possible though, even if it means I have to wait a year or two
This is the perfect counterpoint to the idea that knowledge can't harm you.
I have used a tool (not this one specifically) that could do this specifically for its other function of calculating the worth of all your steam trading cards/marketable game items, and to batch sell them when I have enough to get something with the cash.
I have so much bullshit in my inventory that's not worth putting up at .02¢ each. Hook a brother up with a link
I just checked and i thought it would be more.
But I do not know and will never check the amount of time spent playing.
Damn, $2487.15 over 5 years. I wonder if it factors in games i got externally by guesstimating the price though
It's about external funds added to your steam account, so it should only be actual money, and not guessing the price of games.
That's good too know, though, now i wish i had an accurate measurement of how much money i've spent across external sites too
Does total include the Old Spend?...and what is Package Only? None of these numbers seem to add up to each other. Or are they also separate.
Also what lazy dev just posted the query column names instead of decoding them for the end user
From the page with the values:
"OldSpend" is the amount of external funds applied before Friday, April 17, 2015 18:00:00 UTC.
From Steam support regarding package only:
This row includes the portion of the account's total funds spent that could not be transferred. For example, a hardware purchase, gifted game, or in-game item does not count toward Package Only Spend, but a game purchase for your own library would.
I literally can't see this information on mobile. It prompts me to sign in but when I input my info, email code and all, it prompts me to do it again. 🙄
£1,585.73
Not bad for 16 years I guess.
6 years with just over $300 with 80% played. I was expecting worse after seeing the 5 figure numbers in the comments. Today's price is over $900 tho, patient gamer gang.
598.34 since Dec 2010
Not bad
