So basically "Valve discovered a gold mine by selling you so many games" and "it's your fault for spendijg money on games". Yeah wait wut? As if it's someone's fault that so many games are getting released. Also ending with "beware, not every customer is a die-hard fan". Wow. Go crack the F2P business model next, Sherlock.

Funny enough, the link to Rich Shanton, the one who wrote this, throws a 404 error.

The argument isn't that only Steam gamers are hoarders. The argument is that game hoarders congregate on Steam. You can have hoarding gamers in the wild, and those wild hoarders may never touch Steam, but you're guaranteed to find hoarding gamers on Steam. If you're looking to sell games to hoarders you're going to sell more when you do it where hoarders regularly visit. It's the same reason Epic is giving away free games. They're trying to attract hoarders by giving them a free hoard and regularly inviting them into their shop. They won't really attract hoarders who are entrenched on Steam but they will attract future hoarders who might not yet have a huge Steam library.

My steam library is full of humble bundles that I only bought for 2 games because it would be like $5, cheaper than buying regularly, and still getting like 7 other games with them. And that's even with me giving away keys from games I know I won't ever play.

Digital hoarding is a [mental disorder](https://www.uclahealth.org/news/article/digital-hoarding-a-new-version-of-an-old-psychological-challenge) same as any other form of hoarding.

My epic library is nearly 10% of my steam one, and I've only bought a couple games.

*sips rum*

Per the article you posted (interesting read BTW!) >With digital hoarding, however, the act of saving the file becomes an uncontrollable urge. >“It means that they’ve lost the choice — they feel they have to save it. If they do not, they may feel uncomfortable and, more often than not, anxious that they may need to have access to the information and it’s not going to be there,” he says. But I don't think "picking up a game on sale because you might want to play it and the price is so low you wouldn't even notice the money" is quite Digital Hoarding.

It is very common for people to joke about how big their backlog is. I’m not sure we can call buying things you’re never going to play as frugal. I’m on autism spectrum and do both regular and digital hoarding occasionally but I’m a bit more mindful about it ever since I admitted it. Many people seem to be in denial.

I'm sure there are folks who fall under that umbrella. But I was more responding in the context of this specific comment thread.

From the article: "Hoarding is a disorder characterized by difficulty in parting with possessions" and this is key, "Digital hoarders often will cite an emotional attachment or a sentimental value to files they collect — including photos or email exchanges — associated with their own life experiences or with people in their lives. In such cases, he says, anticipating difficulty coping with feelings that accompany a permanent loss of these items becomes a barrier to controlling their hoarding behavior." The mental disorder comes from the difficulty of parting with those possessions because the individual is tying emotional response to them. Have you ever tried to remove an object that you consider trash from a person that is hording? It's going to be a really bad time and a massive emotional roller coaster for everyone. This article made more sense to post than the original one from PC Gamer. I do wish consultants and experts would stop labeling people with disorders because of anecdotal evidence or trying to have some kind of shock value. It starts associated people of a massive community with a mental disorder too. If someone deleted my steam library, I would be upset, but not on the actual level of an person that hordes. You ever see the show "Hoarders"? It's extremely sad and painful to watch. That's not to say digital horders don't exist on steam. The moment they lose a game and start freaking out beyond "i just lost money", that person needs professional help.

"Oops. The healthy salad got corrupted. Guess it's just steak. ‍️"

I'll just find another torrent tracker where its improved 1.5 version is available.

Buying an indie platformer that you might not play is not anywhere close to actual IRL hording. And it's not even what is being described as digital hording in that article from UCLA. It's straight up irresponsible to compare it to an actual hording mental disorder. Like, you must not have ever experienced that in any capacity to think that. Although, surely digital horders have some cross over. The prevalence of people not playing a game they bought on discount ain't it fam.

You've got a lot of nerve being right

Hey if I could sell a million copies of a game for just a dollar each as my cut of a bundle, well I’d be a millionaire!

Walled gardens create digital plantations

Expanding on that, and explaining why this is not Digital hoarding, I have a HUGE catalog of games, lots of which came from bundles and such, if I was able to sell back games to steam, even if for a few cents, I would delete a big chunk of that. But as is I have no reason to do it, I can put them in a "never played" category and forget about them until I randomly find a game in the store that mildly interests me and notice it's already in my library.

Can this business model survive a recession?