Currently 100% of my time is spent on games that are "six or more years old", and a lot of that is spent on games that are more than 30 years old. But! I'm playing newly-made community content for 30 y/o games. This kind of retrogaming is something that evades Steam statistics entirely because it usually means playing custom sourceports of old games which rarely are on Steam. One old game I play on Steam to contribute to this statistics is Skyrim.
this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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Does "older games" only mean the initial public release? So world of Warcraft, Dota 2, Minecraft... all those games that are constantly updated etc. too?
Because that would be a really useless statistic. Many games are not a one time release and done thing anymore. They evolve over time. The games I listed have large player bases.
Exactly what I was thinking. While it's a great headline the article is nonsense. What about early access? Did those players play any new games? How much time was spent afk? Were those old games new purchases? This is a cherry picked statistic and almost certainly doesn't paint a clear picture or tell any story except "live service games work"
It's wild how good the cheap games are these days. I'm 30 hours into playing Noita, have hundreds of hours in Vampire Survivor.
And I got about 15 hours into Dragon Age: Veilguard before it occurred to me I could crack open the Dragon Age Origins Ultimate Edition and actually have an enjoyable experience.
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Oh, I'm sorry, I thought I just didn't like games/am depressed/games are getting BETTER, actually.
In general, I'd agree that games are getting better, if for no other reason that there are so many made these days that eventually you'll find something great.
If nothing else, the total volume of great games that are available to play keeps increasing because of massive improvements in backwards compatibility through steam and other online game distributors.
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I have a large backlog of five(?)+ plus year old games that are really good and I have yet to play. I'd much rather burn through those enjoying them on high settings instead of playing current games on low settings while trying to dodge crap monetization.
Where my Civ 6 people at?! Wooo!
Civ4 is the best Civ.
I saw a stat on Civ VI steam page today that 45 000 people were playing it at that moment. That counts for something!
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Was just now in another thread having nostalgia about this game: Reamlz.
It was distributed as freeware/ shareware back in the 90's. You had to physically mail the producers cash if you wanted to get the expansions. I played through Balders Gate III recently and honestly, it doesn't even come close to the replayability that Realmz had.
Realmz was out about the same time as Spiderweb Software's games (Exile series, later re-released as Avernum series). Both were popular RPGs for the Macintosh (though I believe both had Windows releases as well).
While I did play and enjoy Realmz back in the day, I personally preferred the Spiderweb Software games. More complicated interaction with the world, and I preferred the writing. Less-pretty, though the Avernum re-release was isometric and had new graphics. Have you ever tried them?
I don't know if I can recommend them in 2025, but if you're still enjoying Realmz, I figure that the Spiderweb Software stuff might also be something of interest.
EDIT: The current Steam sale, which runs for another two days, appears to have a bundle of all of their games on sale for 60% off. I didn't personally enjoy the Geneforge series as much as the Exile/Avernum series, and the Avadon series is considerably simpler, and didn't really grab me. But a lot of the games are also on sale individually, so...shrugs
EDIT2: It looks like Realmz has not seen a Steam release; thought I'd check to see if it was on Steam too.
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launches Baldur's Gate.exe ♪♫ "Brave, brave Sir Garrick, Sir Garrick led the way. Brave, brave Sir Garrick, Sir Garrick ran away." ♪♫
What about new games, like world of warcraft.
I do not. I haven't played a gamer older than thirty years old in years
Yep.. lol I spend an embarrassing amount of time playing EverQuest 1 emulation servers.
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While I agree that some of the reasons are because of industry direction and affordability. I do have to mention also that it could also be because of nostalgia, familiarity, simplicity and people still chipping at their library.
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I have been playing Galaga regularly since 1981. Still play it at least once a week.