Steamaholic – Humble Beginnings

I was first introduced to the platform on launch of Half-Life 2, when it was simply just a piece of DRM to me. Since then, Steam has grown to an online store boasting a catalogue of thousands of games. For most, this just means they have a wide variety of games to choose from before making one or two purchases. However, the more impulsive of us began to take steps which lead to an increasing decline. Through this article, I’ll be retrospectively looking at how I went from a new steam account at the start of 2012 to an account with 520 games by 2015.  I’ll provide tips as I go on how to curb spending on games and hopefully part some wisdom for those on the same dark path.

My problems began during my early years in university. I had to start my own steam account as the shared one between myself, my brother and my dad had been causing us to log each other out. Since the account didn’t have many games on there, I made the simple choice of making my own account. I made only a few purchases for games I’d already sunk quite a few hours in, mainly Counter Strike:Source. I had often been a f2p gamer for my high school life, since my parents didn’t like the idea of online purchases. My most played game during this time was a f2p title, ‘Heroes of Newerth’, which was a Dota clone. Myself and a group of friends in my university halls regularly played together in the same room. Any money I spent on games at this time was mainly console purchases or the occasional micro-transaction. I found myself craving some games I’d been told were essential to play, and in my search for a bargain I stumbled across a plethora of sites selling bundles of games. These were often 6 or more games for the price of one of the collection at a discount. I googled looking for reviews and forums to make sure this wasn’t a scam, and found many were legit. Even better, the majority provided a key to use on Steam. Excellent, I thought to myself. I can save money and potentially find a hidden gem, all for a cheaper price than the one game I actually wanted from the bundle.

The most notorious site for these bundles became humblebundle.com, not only were there some massive names both in the bundles but also buying them. Once more, the bundles allowed a freedom of where your purchases went and gave awareness to many charities as well as the struggles of indie developers to make a living. I felt great simply for purchasing games. I’m supporting charities and the little guy make a living, it’s a win win situation. However, with university life increasing in how much free time I had I began to purchase games for ‘some time in the future’. Eventually I began buying for when I would eventually have a better setup than my craptop which burnt anyone who touched to base. These purchases rarely went past $10 however, and even after a year of these habits I still hadn’t spent much over £200 as a maximum for over 200 games. This seemed like great value at the time. Looking back through my library, there are many titles which have either negative reviews or have been removed from the store.

My bundle habits became a clear issue when I began making purchases such as books and movies an equivalent to a bundles value to decide if I would make a purchase. The value of many products became skewed as I was spoiled by large discounts, even when often the quality of these games were very low. Most of my library I am unsure of where I purchased the game, and there has been a few times where during a steam sale purchase I received the shameful notification ‘you already own this game’. I went from a largely small spender on PC games to spending more than £300 in a steam sale in the space of just over a year. Bundles were a gateway drug into my addiction of bargain purchases. If bundles were the occasional joint, then steam sales became my heroin.

Tip: When purchasing a bundle, ask yourself some base questions. Did I intend to purchase at least 1 of these titles before finding this deal? Do I have the time to play any of these games before I make another bundle purchase? Have I got any games I haven’t even touched yet that I was desperate to play before this bundle? Sometimes a deal is too good to pass on, but unless it is a deal on something you already wanted your best move is to move on.

Continued in the next part – A sale on my Soul.