- Connor Brush
What To Do With Games I Don’t Use on Steam
Once you’ve played a game for a long period of time the game starts to become less interesting to you. Although it is a good game, you’ve completed everything on it and now have new games you like to play.
As years pass, gamers find themselves with hundreds of Steam games installed that they no longer use. Steam users have begun to ask what can they do with games they no longer play on Steam.
Previously, games would’ve been commonly seen in the form of a disc. This made it easy to resell, give away or bin old games that you no longer play. Now, because the majority of games consoles and Steam sell digital copies of games, it’s much more complicated to get rid of old games.
These are the 3 main options you can follow:
How To Delete Game Titles That Remain In My Steam Library
Once you have finished with a game, you can simply delete it from your Steam account. This will clear up some memory on your PC and also de clutter your Steam library. Follow the steps below to remove games from your Steam library:
1. Open Steam
2. Select “Library”
3. Find the game you want to delete and right click on it
4. Select “Manage”
5. Select “Uninstall”
Its important to note that even if you delete the game from your Steam account, you can always reinstall the game at any point for free. This is because you have still purchased the game and therefore own a copy of it.
How To Hide Games On Steam
If uninstalling a game is not what you want to do, you can always just hide the game. This means that the game will not show in your library for you or your friends. The best aspect of hiding a game is you still have it installed and can easily play it whenever you want.
This is probably the best option unless you’re short on memory and want to clear up some space for new games. The following steps demonstrate how to hide a game on Steam:
1. Open Steam
2. Select “Library”
3. Find the game you want to delete and right click on it
4. Select “Manage”
5. Select “Hide this game”
In order to view hidden games on Steam, users can select the “View” option on Steam and select “Hidden Games”. This will show the hidden games.
Can I Gift An Old Steam Game To a Friend
When a gamer is finished with a game, they often want to gift this game to their friend for free. This is what gamers used to do years ago with physical game copies, and they would swap games with their friends. This allowed gamers to enjoy a variety of different games at a fraction of the cost.
Steam users have asked if it is possible to gift a game to one of their friends. The answer is yes depending on what copy of the game you bought. If you purposely purchased a gift copy of a game, you could gift this to your friends. If you purchased the game for yourself and played it, you cannot gift it to your friends.
There is a work around to this that enables your friends to play your games for free. This is called family library sharing.
What Is Family Library Sharing On Steam
Steam have stated:
“Family and guests can play one another's games while earning their own Steam achievements and saving their own game progress to the Steam Cloud. It works by granting family members access to games on a shared computer”.
Although this is great, you do need to be using the same PC as the game owner. This allows friends to swap devices and play each other’s games freely.
What Is Steam
Steam is a digital game distribution platform that was founded in 2003. Steam lets it users download, play and create their own PC games. Currently there are over 30,000 games available to download and this number in constantly growing. With new users joining the platform every day, there have been a number of issues reported with the platform.
Conclusion
Whether you’re new to gaming or have been gaming for years, we all come across the same issue with old games. You may have a game installed on Steam that you’ve not played for 2 or 3 years, if this is the case you need to decide what to do with it.
Whether you keep the game or follow some of the guides mentioned above, its personal preference. If I need space on my PC or console, I would just uninstall the game. If you decide you want to play the game again, simply just reinstall it for free and start playing.
