Buried Steam tool shows how much you've spent on your account in your lifetime

Steam lets you see how much total funds you’ve poured into your account over the years, and many users are shocked to find out how much of their net worth they’ve poured into their accounts. It all started when Reddit user u/HappyMcflappyy shared their Steam Points balance of 3,566,945. Given that you earn 100 points for every dollar spent on the platform, that means they had sunk over $35,000 into games and other apps. But another Redditor replied, saying that the fastest and best way to see how much you’ve allocated throughout the existence of your account is to go to Help > Steam Support > My Account > Data Related to Your Steam Account > External Funds Used.

When you go here, the app will ask you to sign in again, as if to confirm if you’re ready to see how invested you are. Once done, you’ll see five categories: ‘TotalSpend’, which is the total amount you’ve put into your Steam account, ‘OldSpend’, which is how much you’ve expended on Steam before April 17, 2015, ‘PWSpend’, which tells you how much you’ve spent on the Perfect World platforms for CS:GO or Dota 2, ‘ChinaSpend’, which is how much you’ve spent in Steam China, and ‘PackageOnlySpend’, which is the total amount for non-transferable purchases — i.e., game purchases for your own library using external funds.

I’ve asked around the Tom’s Hardware team about their Steam spending habits, and most of us spent between a little over $100 to nearly $3,500 on the platform. Personally, I’m on the low side, having only put a little less than $400 into my Steam account. This might seem low, but many of us have also purchased Steam keys from Humble Bundle, GOG, and other platforms. I’m also subscribed to Xbox PC Game Pass, which costs a little over $3 a month in my region. One of my colleagues said that if you bought three AAA games for $70 per year, and you’ve had your Steam account since its inception in 2003, then you would’ve spent $4,620 on it. This is quite a reasonable amount, especially since it’s spread over 22 years.

However, a few other Redditors are a bit more hardcore than we are. We went through the original Reddit thread and saw some real high rollers there. One user replied with ‘19k, yikes’, while another one said, ‘I’m just shy of 15k myself…’. These numbers might seem like massive amounts, but if you buy a $4.50 latte at Starbucks every other day for 22 years, then you’ve spent $17,820 on coffee alone. This might make accounts that are worth $10,000 to $20,000 feel less extravagant.

Unfortunately, Steam accounts cannot be turned into assets, as selling them would violate the Steam Subscriber Agreement. Furthermore, you do not own the games you buy on Steam — you just get a license to play them. And while your Steam account might not account for your net worth, you can instead consider it an entertainment expense that counts as an investment in your mental health and well-being.