Steam users have collectively amassed £14bn ($19bn) worth of unplayed games.
That’s according to new research from PCGN and SteamIDFinder, which has put the full cost of the number of unplayed games sitting in our Steam libraries as “about the same as the gross domestic product of Nicaragua”.
Admittedly, the research hasn’t polled every single one of the millions of us who have a Steam account, but the numbers were calcuated by anaylsing the 73m accounts in the SteamIDFinder database that are set to public.
By using the data from those public accounts, the research opines we’ve spent £1.4bn on games we haven’t played even once. Presuming that figure is representative of all Steam accounts, scale that figure up and it’s estimated that across the whole Steam user community, that equates to a staggering £14bn of unplayed games.
If you want to know exactly how much cash is tied up in your pile of shame, head on over to SteamIDFinder.
Valve recently revealed it’s expanding Steam’s already teetering tower of built-in features with a new background gameplay recording and sharing system that’s available in beta now.
As detailed on Valve’s Game Recording beta page, Steam’s new suite of console-like video features begin with two distinct recording modes. A Background Recording mode continuously saves gameplay to a preferred drive – users can set duration and storage limits – while an On Demand Recording mode enables users to start and stop recording as they choose.
A new timeline feature and player-added event markers are intended to make it easier to find key moments (achievements, screenshots, and in-game events in supported games can also auto-generate markers if desired) and recordings can be clipped using new “lightweight” tools.