Meet the Gamer Who Owns Over 40,000 Paid Steam Games
353If you spend a lot of time on Steam, you’ve probably joked about your huge game backlog. Maybe you’ve bought bundles or snagged deals during Steam’s sales, adding more titles than you could ever play. But one gamer has taken it to a whole new level. SonixLegend, based in Shanghai, just became the first person to own over 40,000 paid games on Steam. That’s a record few can even imagine.
This milestone was reached recently when SonixLegend obtained their 40,000th game. According to Steam’s badge data, only about 19 users have ever owned at least 30,000 paid games. That puts them in an ultra-exclusive club. SteamDB estimates the value of their collection could be anywhere from around $248,000 to over $640,000, based on game prices. But the true size of their collection might be even bigger.
That’s because Steam’s badge tracking doesn’t include all the shovelware titles—cheap, low-quality games that often clog the platform—and it also skips most free-to-play games. So, while the count is impressive, it may not include every game SonixLegend owns. Still, they’ve accumulated most of the roughly 45,000 full-profile paid games tracked by SteamDB. With new games coming out every year, it’s possible they might hit the 50,000 mark someday.
But what does owning so many games really mean? It’s hard to tell if all these titles are part of a true backlog. SonixLegend keeps their account private, so details about how much they’ve played aren’t available. We do know that only 261 games have earned them achievements, and just 16 have user reviews—most of these are marked as “Recommended.” That suggests they might not be actively playing most of these titles.
Trying to finish them all would take forever. According to HowLongToBeat, completing just the top 2,500 games in their collection would take over 2,460 days—around seven years—if played nonstop. That’s a staggering amount of time to dedicate to gaming. Ironically, the game they seem to play most often is not even part of their record collection. They’ve spent over 550 hours on Alien Swarm, a free game from 2010 that they keep coming back to.
It’s kind of funny to think that even with access to nearly every paid game out there, their favorite game is a free, older title. It shows that sometimes, the most enjoyable games are the ones you don’t have to buy. SonixLegend’s achievement is more about the size of their collection than how much they actually play. Still, it’s a fascinating look at how far some gamers will go in their digital hoarding.
This story highlights just how massive gaming collections can get—and how owning a lot of games doesn’t always mean you’re playing them. It’s a reminder that gaming can be a hobby of accumulation as much as playing. Whether SonixLegend will ever work through their backlog remains to be seen, but their record-breaking collection makes for an interesting gaming milestone.
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