You add someone. You talk to him at first for like 10 mins or so. Then you never talk to him after that. He is still in your friend list, but you dont talk to eachother at all. Rinse and repeat with almost every friend except some poeple you know in real life. It happened to me since I joined steam. At first when I was playing only dota 2 I thought that the people that I added when I met them ingame were just you know, like mutual acquaintances. But now when I started adding people from other forums and communities, the same happens. Which also makes me question myself, how can some people have like 300 friends or 500, heck even 1000 people, and still talk to them, or know who is who.

Do they even talk to them? More like do steam "friends" talk to eachother at all, or do they keep their steam friend list full of people because reasons.

I dont get it, from what I heard this doesn't happen on the consoles communities(psn or xblive).

I don't talk to people on Steam. I don't think I've ever even seen the interface, and wouldn't even know how to bring it up.

That said, I don't really have any friends on Steam. What's the point in it?

I mean...this isn't really a steam specific thing...it could be expanded to any online game or console with online friend lists. God knows how many people are on my various console friend lists that I talking to once for one game session, then never again.

Also I don't think anyone with 500+ people on their friend lists actually knows them all, I find that hard pressed to believe. Maybe there are some truly social animals out there, but gaming people don't strike me as those types.

I don't even remember who half of my Steam friends are. I actively talk to... like... three of them (out of 53). But that's true of everything I've used with a friend list. One-time chats, friends of friends, people I've fallen out of touch with... it adds up. I don't remove them, since there's no reason to.

I have one steam friend and I don't even know or talk to the guy. Might accept another friend request if I'm feeling even more social

I mean, if you're keeping a friends list of dozens of people you're not talking to, that's on you.

Mine is almost entirely people I know or contact often enough to be worth having on there. Probably the best feature about it is how easy it makes setting up and joining online games that have the friend system implemented.

Also this. I don't know if there is a limit to how many Steam friends you have but there's nothing wrong with just keeping them there. Again, it's on you to maintain it as you see fit. In answer to your question, there's no way someone with 1,000 friends would be active communication with all of them, but that's their problem.

I guess we don't hear about this with consoles because maybe added hordes of friends is more difficult? I don't actually own any so not sure how it works there.

If I forget who someone even is on a friends list, I delete them. If they're forgettable then there's no reason to clog up a tidy list!

This guy knows whats up

What's the point in having friends on PSN or Xbox Live? It's exactly the same thing.

I add friends to populate leaderboards for different games, and to see what's currently popular amongst active gamers. I've never thought of a friends list as something used to talk to people.

I actually just made a friend who I talk to through Steam. Ironically, we both play Final Fantasy XIV without using Steam to do so.

I rarely add anyone as a friend on Steam unless it's someone who I know really well. Even then, Steam is rarely our main avenue for conversation.

I do accept pretty much anyone as a friend if they send a request, though. I'll probably never talk to them, but if they want to add me to their friends list sure, why not?

Leaderboards and news feeds. As someone who has almost zero real world friends who game, I enjoy seeing what fellow Giant Bombers are playing.

Exactly!

Have ya heard of Facebook? ; )
The smaller the friends list the better.
I guess it's some sort of non-gamer social achievement list or some shit.
I have 555 friends! Wwweeeeeeeee!!
No, no you don't...

My list consists of a few IRL friends who I've played with for years and some GB duders. I don't really use steam to talk to either group regardless however. It's more to see what people are playing, achieving, buying, funny screenshots, leaderboards. Stuff like that.

I think all of my steam friends are people I know in real life, so I do talk to them

Sounds like the same kind of shit that happens with friends lists on consoles. Not sure wtf you're talking about with this being a Steam thing

I have 15 steam friends, I know 12 of them in real life, and I talk to about 5 of them regularly (daily), two of those five being online-only friends. I'm surprised to hear people ask what the "point" is - being able to send a message to another user is like the most basic thing I expect to be able to do on a game platform. Arranging to play with a friend, asking a question, or just talking are obvious uses for the friend feature. Steam chat is where "instant messaging" lives on for me, as I don't usually have Facebook loaded up for no reason but I allow Steam to run in the background.

The trick is populating your friends list with your friends.

Maybe the problem is that they're called 'friends' lists? Being friends with 100s of people is hardly possible in real life, let alone on a gaming interface.

I don't have many on my friends list, but they're all people I know very well, so I could realistically call them my friends.

I have less than 20 steam friends and none of my real life friends play on Steam. I like it that way, every one leaves me the F alone.

I have mostly IRL friends on Steam and elsewhere. Still hardly ever talk to them through those interfaces though. Dolby Axon ftw

I have 150 friends or so and I probably talk to about a quarter of them semi regularly. Almost all at one point or another I did talk to regularly - people from old guilds, clans, games, etc but have since lost touch with. Even the ones I don't interact with regularly I'll talk to if I see them playing something in particular like a new game I'm curious about.

Most come from multiplayer games and I add people to play Dota, TF2, CSGO, Payday etc with. TF2 especially - that game is social as fuck if you play on the same few servers all the time.

I guess it all depends on how you play - on the original Xbox I remember I hit the xbox live friends cap because we had a massive network of people to play in house Halo 2 customs. On the xbox360 however I had almost no friends because I didn't do that sort of thing. A majority of my friends on Steam came from doing TF2 lobbies, but if I had never done that my friends list would be a fraction of what it is.

It takes a good sized friends list to make sure you always have people online to play with if you want. Plus I like the interactions - a lot of my closer friends are through Steam and years of playing together.

Oh I should also mention I've had my Steam account for 10 years. Not that difficult to mass people over that stretch of time. Even so I'd still say 3/4 of my friendslist came from a few year period based on what I was playing. So I guess I don't have 300 or 500 friends, but 100 or 200 over 10 years is not that outrageous to me.

I have very few friends on Steam because I delete those who I don't talk to after a while. The only ones I kept around are RL friends and a couple others who gave me gifts before.

It's like facebook, you have like 300 friends but you don't really talk to 99% of them, and then every once in a while you purge your list.

Mine was people that I talked to played with regularly. Actually, it's pretty much all people I know in real life. But then I think I've had it set to be offline for probably 3-4 years so yeah.

You never know when you're going to meet that one magical someone~

"What's the deal with airline Steam friends?"

Sometimes I add people who I only sort of know to those types of lists but just wind up ignoring them and more often than not setting myself to invisible or appear offline because I just like playing games by myself and regret attempting to make online friends cause I basically ignore them like some jerk.

The folks on my list I look at it,

My best friends brother who we play games with sometimes.

A friend and ex work colleague that is best friends with other friends of mine, he also sold me some great pc parts super cheap. Play games with him from time to time.

A guy thats friends with my friends online and we played a bunch of games in past.

A good long time online friend who I played alot of games like Dayz and Payday 2 with if the moons align right in a year.

Old long time online friend from Xbox havnt played steam games with him TBH.

A good friend I talk to on steam everyday and play steam games often.

Another good friend with the same deal.

A good friend thats been off the radar for 2 years.

Envane who is around here in GB, I played Dwarf Fortress succession game with him on the forums and later bumped into each other on DOTA 2, often played matches together with other GB dudes or ran into him against me at times. Till I quit playing Dota.

Another long time online friend who was part of the Dayz Payday 2 group.

My sister.

A old Xbox friend.

Another friend MIA for 2 years.

My best friend.

Another online friend of Day z and Payday

Old Xbox friend

and old Xbox Friend.

I have a story and a reason and an actual friendship behind 99% of my friends list. I tend to take it literal its my FRIENDS list not my "list of people."

I currently have 123 friends on Steam. 25ish are people I know in person. Probably another 20-25ish are people I know from the GB forums or other cross-game internet friends (originally met somebody playing Diablo II or WoW, eventually start playing other games with them, etc). 5-10 people are from when I used to play TF2 inhouses (most of those people have been purged at this point). 90% of the rest are from when I was casting all of the GB Dota 2 Community Tournament and inhouses; it's obviously infinitely easier to coordinate tournament games and inhouses if you have a giant friends list to pull from.

A friends list is entirely what you make of it; you get out what you put in. This is no different than XBL, PSN, Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media platform.

@raspharus: I try talking to people on my friends list but it's always me initiating the conversation. I guess I'm just a terrible person to talk to I guess?

I use the steam chat and steam voice client quite a bit.

That's pretty much the case with any online network. I used to accept friend requests from just about anyone on Xbox Live but most of the time never engaged in any conversation with most of them. Eventually I just purged most of those people and ignored any incoming requests. (Unless it was from someone I knew)

@humanity: so much this. I get it that sometimes you have to initiate but when you are the only one initiating all discussions something is wrong.

@raspharus: It does sort of make you feel like a bother after a while.

The Family Sharing program (which also allows friends) is pretty cool.

Man, Jerry Seinfeld's comedy routine got weird.

I mean. If you wanna talk to someone on your friendslist. Then just do it? Someone has to initiate a conversation, and if no one on the other side is, then you have to. If you get shut down after trying, then at least you tried right? Remember most other guys thinks its as awkward and scary to reach out over the net as you do.

I tend to get bad with keeping in touch with people when my circle extends further than like. 10 people. So I largely don't talk to 90% of my steam friendslist on any kind of regular basis. I do however talk a LOT with a few people on there, and to some extent, steam conversations were a big part of how I got to know them to begin with. I've made long-term friends on the net through a bunch of different means. Mostly in games, but also through forums, or chatting up a friend of a friend of a friend.... You know, talking.

And I guess I feel like I should say, if you don't mesh well with someone. Just give it up. It's the internet, not everyone is gonna get along, and there is plenty more to meet. Don't worry about any attempted conversation too much. It really, really doesn't matter what someone on the other side of the internet thinks of you.

About half of my friends list is people I know personally through work, school, or elsewhere. The rest is people I've added because we share some mutual interests, like Giant Bomb folks and achievement hunters, or we've played a game or two online and they seem like cool dudes.

i have a lot of steam friends whom i actually talk to a lot and they are not people i know in real life since my irl friends are all console boys but i guees it all has to do with the reason you added them and if you have common ground to disscuss a topic

Most of my Steam friends are people that I play online MP with regularly. We don't really talk much, but we send each other invites whenever we're online playing MP.

This thread inspired me to clean up my Steam friends list. Just unfriended all the people I don't remember talking to and ended up unfriending 3/4 of my list.

I dont talk to any of my steam friends really, but most of them are users from here and i like seeing what others are playing. I have bought quite a few games because i saw someone launch it and i looked into it more. I guess i get a lame sense of community from it and it makes it feel more open then it really is. Though i don't have any real life friends who play games so i guess anything better then nothing for me.

Most of my friends list is full of friends I know well and their alts. It gets really confusing sometimes. Unfortunately, I'm also that annoying friend that will message you something dumb just to get a response from you to make sure you're still alive and remember who I am. When it comes to games like CSGO or something I invite anyone I know who has the game,it gets really awkward when they're not the right rank and I kick them.

I feel like Facebook is kind of a different story because it's become a newsfeed, chat, and way to snoop on people I may or may not actually care about when I'm bored. I probably talk to 2 or 3 people at most on Facebook. It's just too creepy for me the amount of information that people share on there..

My steam name Abazfera