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Gaming news site PCGamesN has a web tool, SteamIDFinder, that can do a great trick. If you buy PC games on Steam and your profile is set to make your game details public, you can enter your digital user ID into it and see a bunch of stats. One set of stats is for the total value of games listed as unplayed; you can share this page as an image linking your “Bowl of Shame” which includes the total “Value” of your Steam Collection and unplayed games.

Using data from what it claims are roughly 10 percent of the 73 million Steam accounts in its Public-set database, PCGamesN extrapolates $1.9 billion in unplayed games, multiplies it by 10, and casually assumes there’s $19 billion in unplayed games. This is “more than the gross national product of Nicaragua, Niger, Chad or Mauritius,” the site notes.

That’s a very loose “$19 billion”

“Multiplying by 10” is already pretty light science, but the numbers are worth digging into further. For starters, SteamIDFinder uses the current sale price of every game in your unplayed library, as confirmed by looking at half a dozen “Pile of Shame” profiles. An informal poll of Ars Technica colleagues and friends with notable Steam libraries suggests that games purchased at full price make up a small portion of the games in our backlogs. I’d imagine that games acquired through bundle deals like Humble Bundle, or during one of Steam’s annual or one-off sales, are a large part of most people’s Steam catalogs.

Then there is what counts as “Unplayed”. Clicking on the filter tool next to my Steam library and selecting “Unplayed” suggests that I have 54 titles out of a total of 173 that I’ve never opened. My own manual count of my library is closer to 45. Steam and I disagree on whether I’ve run and played Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition (I definitely did and I was definitely blown away), Mountain, and SteamWorld Dig. And Steam definitely doesn’t count games that you buy through Steam, modify in some way, and then run directly through a Windows executable. I’m sure I’ve played some TIE Fighter: Complete Conversion, just not through Valve’s channels. An Ars game editor Half-Life 2 several times from 2004-2007, but Steam says they never played it because it didn’t start counting hours played until March 2009.

Even if they aren’t special tools, Steam libraries sometimes end up with small parts of a game you didn’t want and may never play, like Half-Life Deathmatch: Source. I have quite a few Star Wars games that I never intend to play because they were part of a bundle that won me over jedi knight and Jedi Exile for cheaper than each game costs on its own.

What “shame” really looks like.

Curious about what people’s backlogs looked like, I asked friends and colleagues to make their own numbers after checking them for errors and quirks. Here’s the Ars list:

• Kevin Purdy: 173 games, 45 shutouts (26 percent)
• Lee Hutchinson: 361 games, 109 not played (30 percent)
• Benj Edwards: 404 games, 148 shutouts (36.6 percent)
• Andrew Cunningham: 172 games, 79 not played (46 percent)

Friends who checked ended up with 25 percent, 40 percent, and 52 percent. So no one I could easily poll had less than 25 percent of their games unplayed, and those with higher numbers tended to buy into bundles, sales, add-ons, and other login generators. And no one thought their total dollar value made any sense given the math of full price.

Back in 2014, Kyle Orland went deep into the Steam stats. Among games released after Steam began tracking hours in March 2009, 26 percent had never been played until then, while another 19 percent had only been played for an hour or less. That’s roughly 45 percent of the games that were played in token time.

There’s also a much more important point of contention here: you don’t have to feel “ashamed” to give too much money to people who make games, especially smaller games, if you don’t want to. This applies to an even broader understanding of Unplayed, like checking out an intro level or two. Sometimes playing a game for a bit and deciding it’s not something you want to put dozens more hours into is worth it, whether you want the refund or not.

If you’ve looked up your own stats and feel surprised, you can save your unplayed games as a special collection on Steam, and that might inspire you to check out the most intriguing ones left. Or, like me, filter this list further by games that have been confirmed by Steam Deck and pick them up on your next trip.

You can usually make extra money easier than an extra life. No one will inherit your Steam library (probably), so it’s worth nothing anyway. Play what interests you when you have the time, and if the unplayed count helps you avoid your worst impulse sales purchases or rediscover lost gems, so be it. There are clever tricks, but no real math – no real shame.