How Much Money To Buy Everything On Steam

Steam's new Point Shop makes you face the awful truth of how much money you expend on Steam

(Image credit: Valve)

12,184 points. For a few transactions, that was a meaningless number on my Steam account, the quantity of points I have to spend on stickers and backgrounds in Valve's unused Points Shop. Then I clicked a link that says "How points work," and lettered that I take in 100 points for every $1 I pass on Steam clean. I did the math. Okay, that's only $120. Not bad at all. Except the points only started accruing a few months ago, second in January of this yr. Somewhere in my brain, a crack formed in the wall that holds back discarded, suppressed thoughts, and through and through it whispered a voice:

"Simply how practically have you gone on Steamer since 2005 ?"

I execute not want this thought in my head, but now I'm cursed IT. All time I stamp it down buying a new game on Steam clean will bring it up again, because I'll start racking up those points wise what they represent. I've never run my Steam profile through the SteamDB Estimator because I really don't want to think near how practically money I've spent on my spare-time activity over the conclusion 15 eld. Does anyone?

For Valve, the Points Shop seems equivalent however another artful way to support people absorbed in the Steam ecosystem, a trifle nudge towards spending Thomas More money. But I'm non sure the designers sentiment about what Points do if you never spend them. They'll just keep spile up with all purchase. For me, I retrieve the Points Shop English hawthorn actually do the opposite of what Valve wants. It'll make me hesitate, just a little bloodguilty, every time I'm about to buy a back.

The Points Shop at builds on top of features Valve has added to Steam over the last few years, like trading cards and leveling up profiles to unlock special emojis and bits of profile customization, to make Steam more just a launcher. The Points Shop greatly expands that customization with more emoticons, chat stickers, effects like confetti, and visibility background images. On that point's even an harmful golden profile that gilds your Steam page for a mere 5,000 points—simply IT expires after 30 days. Deprivation to stay gold? Rightful spend at to the lowest degree $50 all calendar month!

I don't use Steam for its biotic community and don't care about some of these customization options. But many people do, and it's easy to imagine a few being lured into buying more games just to keep off earning those points. I find it discomfited, in the same agency I don't love Mobile games monetization systems designed roughly the knowledge that certain players known as "whales" leave compulsively slump thousands of dollars into them.

If Valve's goal here was to keep back people more active and invested in Steam, pointing resolute them just how much money they're disbursement actually seems like a bad mind. Sometimes we buy games because we know we want to bid them appropriate there and past, but many a times—ilk right now, during a Steam sale—bargains tempt us into buying piles of games we might play, at some bedimmed orient down the roadworthy when we ultimately have All That Time.

This is why the Steam backlog is a universally tacit construct. If Valve wanted to do me a solid, it would build a button into the purchasing treat that says "Hey, we noticed you have 400 unplayed games in your Steam library. Are you sure you want to buy these five games, even though they're on sale?"

Imagine about how much money that would probably save! I've compulsively bought thus many games because they were on sale and buying things gives me that little flash of excitement. And then, predictably, I've never gotten around to performin them. I could've just waited to buy those games in another sale five geezerhood later alternatively and invested that money. Factor in tripinnate occupy or a just stock purchase, and I'd exist wealthy by now!

Okay, that's a lie. I wouldn't atomic number 4 deluxe. Only I'd accept literally thousands of dollars, instead of thousands of points which I can purpose to purchase a Tub Geralt spine or to simply gaze at patc contemplating my possess painful decisions.

The system ISN't all bad. I think it's cool that you bum gift other users things, like "award" badges, to praise a review Beaver State Workshop mod that they successful. That's a neat way to promote more empiricism interactions in the community. And I hope developers that made stickers or whatever for their games get some do good out of the system.

Just I'd rather return to a hebdomad ago, when all newborn purchase I make along Steam from here to eternity didn't come up with a intrinsical reminder that it's a big ol' money pit.

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, prototypical at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the Personal computer Gamer team in 2022. Wes plays a trifle bit of everything, just he'll always spring at the run a risk to cover emulation and Japanese games. When helium's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a entangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (IT's actually becoming a job), he's probably acting a 20-year-old RPG or close to opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks outer subjective stories and in-profoundness histories from the corners of PC play and its ecological niche communities. 50% pizza pie by mass (deep dish, to be specific).