Steam Personal Challenge: I’m Done. The Backlog Wins!

Posted on June 15, 2026 by Aywren

Okay, so maybe the backlog doesn’t completely win. But after 12 years of trying to work through a growing Steam backlog, I’ve finally come to the point where I feel like I’m done with this project.

Over the past decade plus, I’ve worked though my backlog significantly. I’ve reached up to 76% of my games played at certain points. And my current play ratio sits at this:

Considering in my very first Steam Challenge post, I started with only 29% of my games played, I think I’ve done a decent job of seeing this through. Overall, I’ve done what I set out to do – get my backlog to a manageable spot where I’ve played most of the games that I own.

So why is it just now that I’m finally deciding to throw in the towel?

It’s because Steam taken a page out of Epic Games’ playbook and start giving away free games more often. And some of these games are games I’m interested in at the free price point. Due to time constraints, however, I just can’t play as many games as they’ve been giving away in the past year.

So, what do I do? Just not pick up a free game and put it in my library because I don’t have time to play it anytime soon? That seems… silly. Especially if I do wish to play it sometime in the future.

This started sometime late last year where I remember getting 100% Orange Juice and Toy Tinker Simulator for free over the holidays. I did play these and included them in my Quickplay posts earlier this year because I somewhat felt pressured to keep on top of my backlog at the time.

I thought free games might have been a passing thing around the holidays. But fast forward several months later, and I’ve noticed that Steam is continuing to give games away. Some of them I passed on because I wasn’t interested in them, but some I did pick up, despite not having time or motivation to play them immediately.

Each game I add to my backlog inflates the statistics a little more. This puts more pressure on me to play games, even if I’m not in the mood for it and…

Well… it’s just not fun.

That seems to defeat the purpose of the whole hobby at this point. I have too many other things to be concerned about to debate whether I should accept free games on a storefront because of backlog statistics.

I doubt that’s what the game makers or Steam would want, to be honest. And I’ve found my mindset drifting further and further away from considering my backlog statistics as I just play whatever is inspiring me instead.

Syn and I have put a lot of time into Windrose lately – I need to write about it. I also picked up Paralives on launch – which I need to write about, too. Aside from that, I’ve tried out some smaller games, some more Picross (which I recently discovered I enjoy), and put focus on playing some games on my Nintendo Switch, as well.

There are so many survival sandbox games that I’ve played that are going into launch state this year. Survival sandboxes (plus FFXIV) tend to eat up most of my gaming time on the weekends. I don’t mind that at all, however.

So, all this to say, I’m done with my backlog struggle for now. I might one day come back, run the stats, and see where I sit with my Steam games. But who knows… I might not. Either way, I think that’s fine.

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