No one ever said gaming was a cheap hobby, especially when it comes to PC. Frequent Steam sales and ever-expanding hard drive space make it easy to build up a library without realizing it, and some gamers are balking when they find out exactly how much they’ve given up to Gabe Newell over the years.
There are worse vices to have, certainly, but having it put in perspective like this has been a shock to the system for many who thought they have simply been spending $20 here and there over the years.
As it turns out, a way to check how much money you’ve spent on Steam is built into the app itself. Navigating to Steam Support under the Help tab and then selecting “Data about my account” and “External funds used” under the My Account tab will show you exactly how much of your hard-earned cash you’ve put into Steam. This is without considering the material costs of upgrading rigs and peripherals, which means that your true total is likely even higher. I’m not going to be sharing my number here because, quite frankly, I’m embarrassed. If you seek this forbidden knowledge for yourself, however, make sure you’re sitting down first.
This method was recently shared on Reddit, where it accrued thousands of views and hundreds of similarly mortified gamers. The prevailing mood was one of shock and occasionally outright denial, with one commenter definitively proclaiming that they’re “not going to look at that figure. Nope. Not happening.” Another bemoaned that they “could have funded a third world country takeover”—perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, but with quoted figures in the discussion running up to the tens of thousands, it’s easy to start dreaming of what else could be bought with all that cash.
It wasn’t all doom and gloom, thankfully. Some claimed to have numbers as low as 300 euros across a decade-long period, with others vowing to show their results to their significant others in a bid to prove that gaming surely isn’t as bad of a habit as it may seem.
As mentioned above, however, there are worse hobbies. The thread’s users seemed to average out to a little under 1,000 dollars per year—and while a grand may sound like a lot, other hobbies like concert visits or tabletop gaming can easily eat up as much, if not more, on a year-to-year basis. Don’t feel too bad if you fall for the next Steam Sale, but if seeing that number made you rethink your gaming choices, it’s worth implementing a monthly limit to make sure you don’t go too overboard.
