As gamers we have a propensity to stick to our favorite cult classic games; be it the publicly proclaimed game of the decade The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, or the fan favorite Fallout: New Vegas, or even fans of the Soulsborne genre declaring each game from the developers of FromSoftware as precious tales of a fantasy world making us return to them time and time again. In turn however, we tend to cast aside games that may not peak our interest, which in most cases include but are not limited to Stalker collection, Disco Elysium, and the Half-Life remake Black Mesa.

You might wonder what the total amount comes to when adding up all these games and our friends at PCGames and SteamIDFinder have calculated the total to be a whopping $1.9 billion/ £1.4 billion worth of games. The nail in the coffin however, is that this data is acclimated from 10% of the user profiles (73 million) which are public in SteamIDFinder’s database; multiply the value by 10 and funnily enough, we get the value $19 billion, more than the value of the total Gross Domestic Product of Nicaragua ($18.3 billion in 2023) and even Niger, Chad and Mauritius.

It is understandable however why we see so many drop offs in playtime or even interaction with these games, mainly of the rpg genre since they tend to have very long hours of playtime. Witcher 3, Dragon Age or even the cult classic Half-Life 2 are sitting on a lot of Steam Libraries languishing in neglect. Maybe they didn’t catch our eye at that time or maybe they were overhyped beyond our likings leading to the desolation of these widely popular games. However, we can only hope to find the time and spark to come back and finish these masterwork products; and not undermine whole populations.