Cleaning up my Steam library

oooh yeah im doing this right now actually as for a couple days, some time ago i used steamdb to add free games to my library and i ended up with about 4.5k f2p games and about a week ago i decided i need to clean up my library. well so far im at 1593 f2p games so i still got some cleaning to do lol

I did the same a few years back.
Before Steamgifts i activated everything from bundles on my account no matter what, which in turn leaded to a lot of games i would had never even touched.
So i purged them all as soon as we got the means from Steam to do so.
If i remember right it was something around 400 games, not all trash though just uninteresting for me too.

And with SG acting as my to go key dumpster for unwanted games the task was a bit smaller then it would had without.

I bought a bunch of Humble Bundles when they were cheap, but managed to not activate a lot of the less enticing games somewhat early on. So I have a good amount of cruft but could be much much worse. I've been trying to play my backlog and categorize some stuff. There are definitely games that would benefit from being pulled from my account, but I was focusing on getting my physical media game library weeded out first. (Which I did! Earned a good chunk of money from the local retro game shop, and bought a few better games.)

The Steam Deck has been instrumental in allowing me to tackle my backlog, and still let me mom as needed. The deck pauses games just as well as the Switch, which is impressive for a Linux system.

I use backloggery.com to track things. It's handy to know what platform I played things on.

I do it every now and then, but maybe once a year now that I knocked out most of the unwanted things. It's rare nowadays that I activate something that ends up "remove-worthy" later on.

I personally try not to redeem games that I know I will never play. I also categorize new games as soon as I activate them into my different Collections' on Steam, I also have similar categories in Heroic just to see which free games I got actually interests me. Took a while to do them but I can only imagine how much longer it would take if I keep delaying and watch my library grow even more...

I just hide them. 1113 hidden atm. I rarely get free trash from sites anymore, but still do Indiegala game daily.

TOTALLY
I don't have a problem, YOU have a problem

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Hopefully you didn't delete any games that you won on SG. Not saying that to be self-righteous or anything...simply pointing out that if you won something here and it's now not on your account, all of the checkers (both for SG itself or sgtools-protected GAs) will have you marked as having inactivated wins.

So my friendly advice is if there are games in your library in which you don't have any interest that you won here...just hide them like an unwanted child in the attic of a horror movie. Deleting them will cause you problems.

Just trying to help. 😎🤙

Nah I never deleted a single thing, I just hoard them, it's not like they occupy physical space.

I used to have anxiety about the backlog and how I'd never manage to play all of the things in my library unless I dedicated the rest of my life to it, but I eventually reached the conclusion that I was thinking about this the wrong way. Instead of looking at my library and seeing a list of games I HAVE to play I should see it as a list of games that are AVAILABLE to play, it makes a world of difference if you treat it as a buffet where you only need to pick whatever you're actually going to play and not waste mental energy feeling anxiety over the vast amount of things you walked right pass by.
Granted, I didn't come to this conclusion all by myself, I realized this after watching a video essay on youtube where someone was questioning what even was the point of having a backlog and how they instead opted to just play whatever they felt like playing whenever they felt like playing and since the whole point of having a hobby is enjoying it. That video was a big eye opener.

On a side note, oh boy do I relate to the whole "undiagnosed but pretty sure I have it" thing, just not with OCD in my case. Like all throughout my life people close to me have pointed out that I have certain traits that resemble either autism or adhd but I never wanted to acknowledge it, I even got a therapist commenting to me once in the middle of the session that some of my behaviors reminded him of autism. Some day I'll have to address that and go to a psychologist or psychiatrist seeking an actual diagnosis.

Yes some years ago i deleted 1000-2000 games from my steam library (i know no more exactly how many).
Excluding ofc games won here. But including many games i unlocked first achievements. Games from bundles, free games but also some games i purchased. 😑
I'm much happier since then, because i always come across something i wanna play.
Also i filtered 24.000 games here, so i don't make the same error in the future.

Around New Year I did my last sweep and deleted about 140 games. Usually I use https://www.lorenzostanco.com/lab/steam/u/golwar/_/q6E4tc0PI to identify candidates with trash ratings.

By now I should mostly be done.

I checked and I have 180 removed games so far, not counting free-to-play games, now I am way more careful which games I add and which not, I mean I was never a person that activated everything but was way easier then I am now.
See no use for games in my library that I won't play anyway!

Nope, I'm quite the opposite. I keep https://steamdb.info/freepackages/ in an open tab and refresh it every few hours. I just like to see the number go up.

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I'm like you, at first I'd get my hands on every freebie promo or whatever to raise the numbers (but not raise them for the reason you might think... heh). Nowadays I don't enter any of those promos unless I'm interested in the game. I've barely deleted any game, just VR-only ones and LOTRO. The ones I think are crap are in a collection called "crap", but I've not deleted them. I've also been collecting free games that look very worth it in another collection but I don't count them yet as in library until I get to test them (near 800 atm).

The remaining 4000+ games I have I would like to play, even not in their entirety, once in my life. This year I'm barely getting any new games, and if I survive next year will be even fewer. So if my life expectancy is at least 50 years more (miracle!), I might achieve that.

As someone who spins my coin around for a very long time before a financial decision I am currently at 259 games and I regret none of my purchases, maybe Mortal Kombat 11 and that's about it.

Once I've started to actually play my backlog, the deluge of free games became an issue. I spent a lot of time cleaning my library from Demos, Alphas, Prologues and Test games, but I doubt I found them all and I doubt I ever will. It's weird how compelling it felt at one point to run ASF and grab anything and everything, but also how bad it made me feel afterwards to see a library cluttered with stuff I don't care about and will never play.

I manage my library with Playnite. One of the most helpful things I've ever done was create a category of games called "Backlog". It hovers around 100 games, give or take (I add and remove games all the time), which is a much more manageable list to go through and find a game than going through the 5000+ games from multiple itch bundles and free Steam games. Also helpful is going through the "Beaten" category and seeing how far I've gone since I started playing my games intentionally

Why get rid of games? Just hide them. At the same time if it doesn't look like something I might play I just avoid it at this point. I guess that's the same principle, just getting rid of them before I even get them. So don't worry be happy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-diB65scQU

Good idea, I like to keep things neat too (like not having too many games installed simultaneously), but I should really prioritize cleaning up my wishlist first...because its bloated and outdated :-s
But its a bit of a chore.

I’ve done several passes on my library to clean up games I either collected or can honestly say I won’t make the time to play. I think at my peak I was around 1900 games, now my profile says ~750, but I believe it counts hidden games and doesn’t count the handful of games Steam is learning about.

Feels like a huge waste sometimes, but hey. Paradox of choice is way easier to manage!

I did and would do it again. :)
In total, I deleted 1400+ games. I would keep some if they weren't in a bundle though, since Valve currently don't let you to delete games separately if you bought them in a bundle.

No, but when tags were new I went through them all and added my own tags, playing the unfamiliar ones for just long enough to find out how I would categorize them. I think my games still numbered in the hundreds then, rather than thousands. Now that I have all those tags, I don't use them. Good times.

Yes! I did. Joining BLAEO has been amazing for me. It made me take a good look at what I had and the HLTB for each game. Even on SG, it made me reconsider every time I enter for a game GA.

It made me realise that life is short, play the games that appeal to you the most. Ditch the ones you have no intentions of enjoying or playing.
Now to only carry this mindset to IRL and i'll be sorted haha😅

My library needs a good cleaning.
I also activated so many freebies I know I'll never really play, I wish I could give them away but Steam is silly that way.
Also lots of games I finished and will never play again that are just cluttering my already unmanageable library.

No, why would I? panic
I spent a lot of time - and money - on collectiong them all. They are my precious little... well, not babies, but you get it. I even try to keep those... which are no longer available on steam.
Ok, I might have... maybe 2 games I don't really plan to ever touch? But that's no reason to kick them. They eserve a safe place too :3

[Edit] I never entered all the games either. I'm just joining those I actually want to play :3

Not going to lie, I should be doing a clean-up. Like many here, I got a lot of free stuff or games from bundles I don't think I'll ever get to play or want to play.

Recently I started being more mindful of what I add to my library not to bloat the list, but still, I'm not perfect and the list exceeded my expectations.

I am very blessed to have so many games. 🥰

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