Steam Week in Review: Steam just got its first ‘dopamine site’, so you can fatten a fake backlog without spending a cent

Watch Dogs 2 is currently $2.50 on Steam. It’s hardly a classic, but it’s not terrible either. At one cent per 10 minutes of content, how can you resist? It’s only five pleasantly tactile mouse clicks away.

Maybe you can’t resist. During Steam’s seasonal sales it’s possible to scoop up dozens of games for less than $5 a pop. Ted Litchfield found 31, many of which could individually keep you occupied for weeks. The temptation to splurge is probably irresistible, especially if you’ve been bitten by some of Steam’s incentives to hoard: maybe you love to customise your profile using Steam points, for example. Or maybe you love trading cards. Or maybe you just find pleasure in watching your library grow.

Or maybe, one day, you really will find the time to play through Dead Island 2, even though you don’t like zombie games, or first-person games, or games set in Los Angeles. For $5, it’s an investment in case you change your mind about all of those things. I’m assuming that was the logic which led to the mysterious appearance of Gotham Knights in my library: I don’t like Batman, I loath superheroes, and I can’t stand grindy, icon strewn open world games.

As Mashable reports, Korea has a cost-free answer to the dopamine hit that comes with impulsive online purchases. FoodNeverComes is an app that simulates the shambling, shallow pleasure that comes with making an online transaction, except you spend no money. The user can browse a list of restaurants, select from dozens of menus, take pleasure in pressing “purchase”, and then watch a fake GPS delivery tracker transport goods that never come. That’s just one example of a growing number of these fake purchase sites, dubbed ‘dopamine sites’.

As psychologist Dr. Gabrielle Schreyer-Hoffman tells Mashable, “We do see people use social media, shopping, and buying food to fill voids and avoid being present. Maybe you don’t spend the money, but you’re not really dealing with the core issue, which is: Why are we going to these websites to do this?”

Is it sometimes more pleasurable to buy games than to play them? I’m no psychologist, but reading about these Korean dopamine sites immediately puts me in mind of my Steam backlog. I wasn’t surprised to find that someone has made a dopamine hit website themed around the current Steam summer sale.

At steamsalesimulator.com, developer Mike Wing has replicated Steam pretty much exactly. You can click “add to cart” on everything, add endless thousands of dollars to your wallet, and then hit that blessed “continue to purchase” button which triggers a succession of melodious, life affirming, congratulatory, slot machine-style chimes. Occasionally, Gabe Newell himself sends you a randomised gift. (Thank you, fake Gabe for gifting me fake Wall World). There’s even a community market where you can buy fake cosmetics: for $0.09, I copped a Distinguished Antique Endtable for Don’t Starve Together. Feels good, man.

After around ten minutes spent on that website I accrued 49 games, reached Steam level 51, and saved a total of $977.73. And I still feel barren inside.

The rise of these dopamine sites reminds me a little of the birth of modern idle games. When incremental games like Candies and Cookie Clicker appeared on the scene in the early 2010s, most people received them as a joke. I remember the widespread expression of bemusement on social media as people acknowledged the genre’s satirisation of RPG levelling up mechanics. I remember droves of people—including myself—realising they were, by accident, fixated on these exquisitely meaningless toys, these lizard-brain feeders. Now there are hundreds of clicker games on Steam: it’s a legitimate genre that people pay money to play.

So while I absent-mindedly click around Steam Sale Simulator, purchasing Russian Life Simulator, Lords Mobile and Sword and Fairy 7 because why the heck not, I wonder how many weeks will pass before everyone’s wasting precious minutes of their life interfacing with fantasy ecommerce storefronts.

Top Steam games by revenue (June 23 – 30)

Steam releases its top sellers charts on Wednesdays, so the below chart doesn’t factor in some late week releases. Not that anything of any particular interest released: it’s extremely quiet out there.

Meccha Chameleon has now sold 15 million copies, so it’s unsurprising that it topped last week’s revenue chart. Cyberpunk 2077 held its spot at No 4 thanks to its current all-time low 75 percent discount.

Significantly, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth hit a new concurrent player count record last week (130,954) thanks to its all-time low 90 percent discount, which also applies to the Afterbirth+ bundle. Modern Warfare 2 also saw a huge spike due to its 90 percent discount—it’s extremely rare for COD games to go that cheap.

Dota 2 got a new event in late June, which explains its appearance last week.

Last week’s Steam deep cuts

Steam review of the week

“It’s okay to kill people and throw them into an eldritch flesh-pit as long as they deserve it.

Is it a game about materialism? Is it about found family?

All I know is, it feels super cathartic to finally tackle and stab someone 58 times after being chased by a giant tree.”

Failgirl69, ruminating rather disturbingly on Feed the Pit.