That post Steam Sale feeling

The image on the right has been making its rounds across the internet these past few weeks:

Its timing is more than coincidental; the Steam Holiday sale ended recently and gamers undoubtedly added to their library of games they haven’t played. It’s quite possible that these games will never be played. Ever. This is a fact that likely compounds with every Steam Sale. This is true for me personally. There are quite a few games on Steam that I have, sadly, yet to play. Mostly it’s due to time, but there are a couple of circumstances where the game was just so cheap that it was an impulse buy; who wouldn’t buy a highly acclaimed title for  $0.99?

I realize that I am not alone. There are many out there, like myself, who have bought games during the Steam Sale without an immediate intention of playing them. They’ll sit in our libraries, watching our every move, waiting to be opened, begging to be played. Instead they continue to sit in solitude, buried further and further into our back log with the release of every anticipated game.

New consoles just came out? Time to enjoy those. That reminds me, I should probably catch up on that console backlog. This month’s Instant Game Collection will help with that. Wait, what’s that one new Steam game everyone keeps talking about? I should probably download that and see what everyone’s talking about. Wasn’t there something I need to play? Eh, it’ll come back to be.

This line of thinking continues until the next Steam Sale, where the cycle will repeat: buy games on the cheap, play a couple, get distracted, forget about your backlog. Not everyone forgets, though. Your bank statement remembers when you see all those transactions with Valve Corporation. Your significant others will remember when they ask why you spent all that money on those games you haven’t played. Your wallet remembers when it feels lighter. Your hard drive remembers when it starts to run out of room. The north remembers.

Finally, it hits you: you just spent fifty dollars on about twenty games. There’s a good chance you do this for every Steam Sale, meaning that if you’re looking to beat all those games, you’ll need to complete one and a half games a week. This is on top of everything else you do, whether its school, work, or your social life.

Then it hits you: you’re never going to finish all of these games. You’ve bought too many. The Steam Sale has won and you have lost. Your life has been taken over by cheap games. You feel empty, shallow, and alone. It’s time to curl up in a corner and wonder where it all went wrong.

Or, you know, you could go and play some games.