What can I do with the steam games that I don't play?

[Johnsmith45]

I have got a lot of steam games that I do not play. If they were physical copies of the game at least I could of traded those games in for something else in a games store. I have always hated digital copies of games for this particular reason. I can buy physical games on the PS5 and the switch but not on PC.  

[TetraSky]

Welcome to the digital world. Where you own nothing and they can take your stuff, that you paid for, away if they felt like it.

[Ottoman420]

Just now, TetraSky said:

Welcome to the digital world. Where you own nothing and they can take your stuff, that you paid for, away if they felt like it.

[tikker]

While you own them and there have been at least one court case about having the legal right to resell them, I am not aware of anything that accommodates it. All they can do for now is collect virtual dust on your virtual shelf.

[Morrie Sells Wigs]

Personally, I can't believe that we still don't have some kind of second hand market for digital games.

I mean, I understand why there is a reluctance on the part of the industry.

But, you'd have thought some kind of alternative would have sprung up by now.

 

A site that lets you buy your games but then also allows you to trade them in, swap them, or sell them on to other users.

The site would handle the security to ensure nobody is conned.

You put your game on the market, ask a price, or say a game you want to swap for, then once someone interested comes along the site holds both parties items until an agreement is reached.

 

Of course, there'll always be that rare case where someone makes a mistake...but the overwhelming majority of interactions will be fine.

[dilpickle]

8 hours ago, Maury Sells Wigs said:

Personally, I can't believe that we still don't have some kind of second hand market for digital games.

I mean, I understand why there is a reluctance on the part of the industry.

But, you'd have thought some kind of alternative would have sprung up by now.

 

A site that lets you buy your games but then also allows you to trade them in, swap them, or sell them on to other users.

The site would handle the security to ensure nobody is conned.

You put your game on the market, ask a price, or say a game you want to swap for, then once someone interested comes along the site holds both parties items until an agreement is reached.

 

Of course, there'll always be that rare case where someone makes a mistake...but the overwhelming majority of interactions will be fine.

Why would a store do all that for you when they make no money from it. In fact they are losing money from providing the infrastructure.

 

 

[Avocado Diaboli]

29 minutes ago, dilpickle said:

Why would a store do all that for you when they make no money from it. In fact they are losing money from providing the infrastructure.

Valve allows you to sell trading cards and takes a cut from each sale. Do the same thing for games, offer a marketplace where people can offer their games and take a cut from each sale. Sure, it's a smaller cut than if they'd just sell you a "new" copy for the price set by the publisher, but they still make money. I mean, they would never voluntarily offer something like that, because as I said, it'd make them less money than the alternative so there's no intrinsic incentive, but if push comes to shove and digital property eventually gets recognized as equivalent to physical ownership, there's not much in the way of actually implementing something like this. After all, "ownership" in this case simply means a game is listed in a database as being owned by me, and that record can be erased and added to someone else's database entry. 

[Guest]

Have you tried playing them? 

[Holmes108]

Valve should let you sell games to other steam users, and they can take 10%. Not a great option, and I wouldn't be thrilled with their 'double dipping', but it would be a better option than nothing.

[Eigenvektor]

On 11/1/2022 at 4:23 PM, Avocado Diaboli said:

Valve allows you to sell trading cards and takes a cut from each sale. Do the same thing for games, offer a marketplace where people can offer their games and take a cut from each sale.

When you sell trading cards you're not competing with Valve. You're making them money for essentially zero investment on their side. If you sell a game license, you are a competitor.

 

Why would Valve be interested in a percentage cut from a "used" game license when they could instead sell the license directly? On top of that, it's not really up to Valve. The developer/publisher is the one who'd be losing out, so they'd want a cut as well. But why would they be interested in selling a license at what is essentially a discount instead of just selling the license?

[ewitte]

I have a bunch of "free" EPIC games that don't appeal to me at all.  Steam at least has things I used to like at some point.  I'm hoping I can revisit some of them with RTX remix.

[QuantumSingularity]

The biggest question is why you buy so many games and not play them? I play all of the games i have in my library at least once a week (except for CS:GO cause i went back to 1.6) because i am careful with what games i buy. But back on the topic - there are still physical copies of the games in the gaming stores BUT they cost way much more than the digital ones and even if you plan on reselling the game i doubt some1 would like to buy it, considering that 5-6 months after launch pretty much every single game could be found for about $10 on some sale or promo site.

[ewitte]

26 minutes ago, QuantumSingularity said:

The biggest question is why you buy so many games and not play them? I play all of the games i have in my library at least once a week (except for CS:GO cause i went back to 1.6) because i am careful with what games i buy. But back on the topic - there are still physical copies of the games in the gaming stores BUT they cost way much more than the digital ones and even if you plan on reselling the game i doubt some1 would like to buy it, considering that 5-6 months after launch pretty much every single game could be found for about $10 on some sale or promo site.

The last "physical" game I got had a code key in the box to add in on the EA launcher.

[NobleGamer]

On 11/1/2022 at 9:23 AM, Avocado Diaboli said:

Valve allows you to sell trading cards and takes a cut from each sale.

Having said that, OP should know that there's apps (like ArchiSteamFarm / ASF) for simulating gameplay for multiple Steam games such that the user can get card drops for games not actually played, then sell those cards to get Steam credit.

 

5 hours ago, QuantumSingularity said:

The biggest question is why you buy so many games and not play them?

I'm not OP, but game bundles are a really easy way to cheaply buy games faster than they can be played. I amassed a Steam library of 1000 games over ~5 years by buying game bundles from Fanatical and Humble as often as 2-3 times a month for starters, redeeming as much as 20 games a month, which has now dwindled to once every 1-2 months.

 

In the past 4 years, I have also won over 150 games from steamgifts.com and given over 3 times that.

[Jerakl]

On 11/2/2022 at 10:46 AM, fpo said:

Have you tried playing them? 

Probably most reasonable comment here

[tikker]

19 hours ago, QuantumSingularity said:

The biggest question is why you buy so many games and not play them? I play all of the games i have in my library at least once a week (except for CS:GO cause i went back to 1.6) because i am careful with what games i buy. But back on the topic - there are still physical copies of the games in the gaming stores BUT they cost way much more than the digital ones and even if you plan on reselling the game i doubt some1 would like to buy it, considering that 5-6 months after launch pretty much every single game could be found for about $10 on some sale or promo site.

If you only play the same handful of games that may work, but it quickly becomes impossible once you have bought many games. I have dozens of games in my library and it's simply impossible to play all of them once a week. They are also story games that one may simply not want to play anymore after finishing them. Like, what if I've seen enough of Crysis. A physical copy I could resell and put towards a new game, but in the digital world we currently have no means to do that.

[diegoaccord]

This is why I'm way more picky about buying PC games than console. 

[QuantumSingularity]

On 11/4/2022 at 11:36 PM, NobleGamer said:

Having said that, OP should know that there's apps (like ArchiSteamFarm / ASF) for simulating gameplay for multiple Steam games such that the user can get card drops for games not actually played, then sell those cards to get Steam credit.

 

I'm not OP, but game bundles are a really easy way to cheaply buy games faster than they can be played. I amassed a Steam library of 1000 games over ~5 years by buying game bundles from Fanatical and Humble as often as 2-3 times a month for starters, redeeming as much as 20 games a month, which has now dwindled to once every 1-2 months.

 

In the past 4 years, I have also won over 150 games from steamgifts.com and given over 3 times that.

So your solution is to exchange the games you don't play for another ones you won't play, if a got that right ?!? Why would anyone care if he can sell a game he bought for $3??? I already said it but i'll say it again - most games once they hit 5-6 months into launch mark are astonishingly easy to be found for under or around $10 (my latest one is Sniper Elite 5 - €80 current price for the deluxe version on steam; got the same EU version last week for €14.45 from kinguin). So let's say you spent full price for a Deluxe copy in the neighborhood of $80 - would you let that game go for $5, 5 months or even less, after you bought it??? I know i wouldn't and will prefer to keep it, launching it occasionally than selling it for less than a box of popcorns at the movies.

[NobleGamer]

6 hours ago, QuantumSingularity said:

So your solution is to exchange the games you don't play for another ones you won't play, if a got that right ?!?

I was answering 2 separate questions that I quoted in my comment:

• What can I do with the steam games that I don't play?

My answer was not to exchange the games they own (thats not possible with Steam), but to just simulate playing them so that OP receives digital trading cards that can be sold for credit on Steam.

 

• The biggest question is why you buy so many games and not play them?

 

This may have been a rhetorical question, but I wanted to provide a perspetive that may enlighten people who can't imagine why. So I explained how "game bundles are a really easy way to cheaply buy games faster than they can be played".

[Holmes108]

On 11/4/2022 at 5:36 PM, NobleGamer said:

Having said that, OP should know that there's apps (like ArchiSteamFarm / ASF) for simulating gameplay for multiple Steam games such that the user can get card drops for games not actually played, then sell those cards to get Steam credit.

 

I'm not OP, but game bundles are a really easy way to cheaply buy games faster than they can be played. I amassed a Steam library of 1000 games over ~5 years by buying game bundles from Fanatical and Humble as often as 2-3 times a month for starters, redeeming as much as 20 games a month, which has now dwindled to once every 1-2 months.

 

In the past 4 years, I have also won over 150 games from steamgifts.com and given over 3 times that.

Yep, my steam library is over 300 games, and my xbox library is over 400. Many are free games, many are things like Humble Bundle, and many are just games that looked interesting and were $5 or less (I should definitely do better with that last category... but hey, what's a few bucks). 

 

I'm definitely a hoarder.

[Morrie Sells Wigs]

On 11/1/2022 at 3:13 PM, dilpickle said:

Why would a store do all that for you when they make no money from it. In fact they are losing money from providing the infrastructure.

 

 

Who says they'd "make no money from it"?

 

It would be set up in such a way that they could make something.

 

Seriously, it's not complicated.

[dilpickle]

On 11/11/2022 at 11:36 PM, Maury Sells Wigs said:

Who says they'd "make no money from it"?

 

It would be set up in such a way that they could make something.

 

Seriously, it's not complicated.

You're right there is nothing complicated about them wanting to sell you a game at full price instead of making pennies by helping you buy used.

[Mark Kaine]

On 10/29/2022 at 4:05 PM, tikker said:

While you own them and there have been at least one court case about having the legal right to resell them, I am not aware of anything that accommodates it. All they can do for now is collect virtual dust on your virtual shelf.

yeah, i don't get it either,  there's not just a court case, there's an actual law (which i dont know the name of atm) that digital goods can be resold,  just like physical goods... yet no one enforces it or even seems to care..Especially weird for the EU because they otherwise pretend to care so much.

 

On 11/1/2022 at 7:37 AM, Maury Sells Wigs said:

Personally, I can't believe that we still don't have some kind of second hand market for digital games.

This. 

 

You cant even sue Steam because they would just drag it out like the previous time(s) they were sued for this... you'd need to basically sue the EU for not following and enforcing their own rules...

[Morrie Sells Wigs]

On 11/13/2022 at 6:39 PM, dilpickle said:

You're right there is nothing complicated about them wanting to sell you a game at full price instead of making pennies by helping you buy used.

You obviously don't understand.

 

That, or you are being toxic.

 

Think about it for a while and see if it makes any sense.

[QuantumSingularity]

Let's say someone is delusional enough to invest into platform for 2nd hand digital products. Drops let's say €10mil (which btw is laughably small amount of money for such an endeavour) do develop the platform with all the hardware, software, human and LEGAL side of the things. User A wants to sell his copy of Zelda for $5, it stays on for 2 weeks and finally finds User B who is willing to pay him $2. They both make the deal, but 30 minutes later you get a claim that the product is defective and/or can't be activated by User B who wants his $2 back. Now how much do you have to charge for stuff like this so the ROI time makes sense and cover all of the expenses for infrastructure, banking, employee salaries, phone contracts, domain, business tax... etc. AND you have to start making profit at some point.