Only around 10 percent of Steam profiles worldwide are public. A new projection now estimates that games worth 19 billion euros are gathering dust unplayed
Did you actually know how much an aircraft carrier costs?No? Well, we’ve looked it up for you and brace yourselves: a nuclear-powered Nimitz-class carrier goes for 4.5 billion dollars over the counter – a real bargain.
However, this does not include the sums that Steam users have apparently invested in games that are now gathering dust unplayed in their owners’ libraries. According to a projection by our British colleagues atPCGamesNthis amount is an incredible 19 billion US dollars.
A pile of money that could buy four aircraft carriers in one go.
How does this number come about?
Every gamer knows the Pile of Shame.Every Steam sale comes around the corner with new, interesting offers and of course you grab them. However, hardly anyone has the time to play all these new acquisitions and so the mountain of unplayed games gets bigger with every purchase.
The colleagues at PCGamesN wanted to know how big – or how valuable – the global Pile of Shame is. However, you can’t simply read out this amount on Steam. The problem:Only around 10 percent (around 73 million) of Steam profiles worldwide are public
The extrapolation of our colleagues is based on these profiles.
Using information from the analysis toolSteamIDFinderour colleagues calculated that these 10 percent of Steam profiles contain unplayed games worth around 1.9 billion dollars. And by unplayed we mean:The games were purchased, but then not started even once.
Multiplying this sum by 10 to arrive at the full number of Steam profiles results in the aforementioned sum of 19 billion dollars, or 17.8 billion euros. This is roughly equivalent to the annual economic output of Nicaragua or Mauritius.
However, this is not a lot of money when calculated down to the individual user: assuming 73 million public Steam profiles, each user only owns unplayed titles worth 26 dollars. That’s no aircraft carrier, but at least you could eat a few kebabs for it
Whether unplayed or not – one person in particular should be happy: Valve owner Gabe Newell. Because he gets a little richer with every purchase you make. And with an estimated fortune of 4.3 billion US dollars (as of 2024), the American can almost buy his own aircraft carrier
And let’s be honest:Who wouldn’t want that?
How many games are on your Pile of Shame? Do you know what your Steam account value is? Let us know in the comments below!
