I think they are saying: Imagine 100 games were sold on steam, and 50 of them were unplayed.
If each game was bought by a different person, then both most games bought and most people never play the games.
However, it’s very likely a small minority of people take advantage of the insane sales Steam has sometimes - like if 50 people bought a game each and played it, and one person bought 50 separate $1 arcade games and never touched them.
You get the same statistics in both cases of number of games played, but it’s two very different scenarios in terms of how humans use steam.
For me I imagine it’s a third case, that people like me often take advantage of the $1 deals and never end up playing most of those old or arcade titles?
A single person who "collects" games or buys them because it seems like good value can have thousands of titles in their steam library. Someone who actually plays all of them will have a much smaller number.
On a sad follow-up, (because it happened 'near me'), once the 'collector' dies, his/her kids will never play those games. Today's 15yo boys will never try to play Zaxxon, Wizball, Saboteur 2. So someone who is 30+ buying (e.g.) 100 games, should know that their kids will safely ignore 99 of them. As game-tech progresses, I think that it's only me (the dinosaur) or few of us that play on a PC and all youngsters play on them fancy consoles. 'Any day now' games will require a VR set (10-15 years?), so no more.
I think it depends on the upbringing on such kids: if you collect alone in the dark and share none of it with your kids before you're gone then it's not surprising that they wouldn't know what to do with any of those.
I think they're saying it's top heavy. There are some people (rich whales) that buy lots of games and don't play them, while most people on steam are playing the (numerically fewer) games that they buy.
The title of the post indicates that most people who buy games on Steam never play a single game that they have purchased (vs. your correct understanding of the data, which is that people buy games and play some but not all of them).
That’s a pretty strict reading of “them”, though. In non-academic contexts, I think most English speakers would understand it as the intended meaning rather than that there are many people who have Steam but never play anything.
The point is, whether intentional or not, the submitted title is ambiguous and possesses the capability to mislead. When talking about data we should strive to use as accurate language as possible.
I wouldn't be surprised if someone's interpretation of the title tended toward their own experience, or lack thereof, with Steam.
If each game was bought by a different person, then both most games bought and most people never play the games.
However, it’s very likely a small minority of people take advantage of the insane sales Steam has sometimes - like if 50 people bought a game each and played it, and one person bought 50 separate $1 arcade games and never touched them.
You get the same statistics in both cases of number of games played, but it’s two very different scenarios in terms of how humans use steam.
For me I imagine it’s a third case, that people like me often take advantage of the $1 deals and never end up playing most of those old or arcade titles?