I cannot be the only one out there with an excess of never-played, never-installed games in my Steam Library.

I often hold back from purchased of new releases saying to myself "Oh I'll wait till it goes on sale" or "Once I have a new graphics card, I'll buy it so I can play with the highest settings." Frankly though, its because of the number of games I have just never touched. Most of them I acquired in the early days of Humble Bundle when if felt like the deals on games were just better though them. That, and seasonal sales on Steam.

So instead of playing the latest and greatest, most of the games I'm playing now are at least a year old, more than that sometimes, and never finished. I have no compulsion to finish every single game I buy but I should finish some of them at least.

I have over 1,200 games in my Steam library. I haven't touched the majority of them.

@mattyftm: I suppose it better than having 1200 physical games taking over your living space.

Is the a solution or is it just a matter of self control?

@thedrinkinggeek: The solution is taking self control. I've got ~300 games and I've played almost all of them and finished about 85% of the singleplayer ones that are in there. Granted a lot of them are re-purchases of very old games I had finished before Steam existed so there's a bunch that haven't got hours on Steam.

Every time I look at a Steam game I think about whether I'm interested in a game because I want to invest a bunch of time into it or whether I'm just interested in it because it has a cool art style or a neat new gimmicky mechanic. If it's the latter I simply won't buy it, most of the time even if it's only $2.50. I haven't touched games like Limbo, Braid, Spelunky or Fez because those games while I think are very cool I know I simply won't put that much time into them.

There are a number of different ways to deal with a backlog that's gone out of control. You'll have to find something that works for you.

It seems like a lot of people make peace with the situation and just let go, knowing they'll never play all their Steam games. I've sort of gone that route except I'm leaning more towards "I won't ever finish all my steam games". I don't *have* to see the credits to a game. When I'm done I'm done, and that's fine. There are other games to play.

So something that's worked wonders for me has been to "enforce" a sort of "15 minute rule". I use the calculator over at SteamDB to sort the games I own by least time played -- and then I just boot up all the games I haven't played yet while using an online stop watch that makes an annoying sound after 15 minutes.

More often than not I know within the first couple of minutes if I want to continue playing or not. The games that I can actually stand to play for the full 15 minutes and that I feel I want to play more of, I "favorite" in the Steam library so that I can play it later. I believe that if a game is (subjectively...) good, it'll grab your attention no matter what. If I don't KNOW by the end of those 15 minutes, I make sure to put it in the next "play these games for 15 minutes" rotation.

I have a pretty good idea if a game is for me or not, at this point. That doesn't mean I won't ever play them or that I'll never be interested in that type of game. It just means that, where I'm at right now, the game I tried isn't grabbing my attention - but having played it gives me a lot more control over my backlog; it has caused me to frequently just get that feeling like "oh man what if I just play more [insert game here]!" instead of just scrolling up and down my steam library thinking "man, I have NOTHING to play!".

Since I started doing this I'm now down to 15% unplayed games -- and a good number of those are free to play MMORPGs that I installed at some point but never actually played.

I've re-installed a couple of the games I uninstalled here and there -- like if someone I know talks really highly of it and I feel like I'm going to give it another shot (sorry Fallout 2, you're still not for me!), and I've found a bunch of amazing games that I genuinely do want to play more of like Company of Heroes -- I didn't even know what that was until I did this 15 minute thing with it and I kind of ended up playing it for like more than 10 hours?

So I guess my trick to clearing my backlog is to... actually play my backlog? Huh.

I've found a great way to deal with a growing backlog is to delete Bundlestars and Groupees from my bookmarks. It took me far too long to realise that 10 cheap games for £2 were 10 games that I'd never have bought, even super cheap, on their own.

I've written them all off now, and set them to Hidden in my library.

My library has 1400 titles...

Put one of those showcase tabs on your Steam profile and have it display game completion %. Maybe that will shame you into getting your habit under control.

You have to ask yourself if you really want it before buying it. I've played almost all my 130 something games. There's little else I want.

As for Humble bundles, I don't redeem the games I don't want. I haven't bought many of those bundles.

I have come to terms with the fact that I own over 150 unplayed or unbeaten games. I don't mind adding to it either if a game interests me because I may not play it that year, or even the next, but I will eventually play it. I am actually making an effort this year to at least play every Steam game I own. I have already beaten 40% of my Steam library.

Maybe I'm odd, but I buy a lot of games to support the developer because I like the ideas and such, even if I have no intention of finishing it. There are a load of games I haven't played, but they are all games I would want to so I like having them (because it isn't unheard of for me to wake up and think "that game that came out years ago: I feel like checking it out". That said, since I starting gaming on PC (2012), I only own 75 games on Steam (plus a couple on Origin, Uplay and GOG): so I do have restraint (held by what I can afford).

i added a new category on my steam i tittled the pile of shame that contains the games i haven't installed or played for more than 5 minutes it's growing and i can't stop buying stuff

This has all been positive and insightful feedback.

I'll probably try a combination of suggestions that you all have given me. Most importantly, going forward, will be self control. I really have to decided whether I will play something or not, despite how cheap a game might be.

Also adding some additional filters/categories to my library will help further organize the games I already have.

I'm getting to the point that I buy new games and barely touch them. How do you resist the zeitgeist???

I, uh... I've got somewhere close to 450 games on Steam and have played to completion less than 30. Historically-speaking, I'm terrible on that front, though I've played probably about 100-150 to the point where I'm satisfied with where I got with their linear content (i.e., campaigns or story modes). Haven't played 127 of them. To be fair, I'm guessing half were Steam keys from Humble Bundle.

I suppose if nothing else it's helping to convince me that the eternal struggle to have a current library is utterly unnecessary, but to an extent I already knew that.

At one point I was pretty obsessed with just adding to my Steam library, whether the games were any good or not. I'd buy indie bundles not because I wanted to play any of the games, but because I was getting 8 games for £2. They could all be terrible games that I'll never play, but JD buy them anyway.

I'm better than that now. I still buy too many games and won't play them all, but I only buy games I'm actually interested in playing. And I'm OK with that.

I feel like I'm pretty good about this...I have 114 games in my steam library and there's only 4 games in my library that I paid for that I haven't played yet..Alan Wake, Bully, Cart Life, and Fallout 2. All those games were really cheap (cart life and fallout were like $2.50 or something)...so I don't feel too bad.