Tracking spending and savings with Loot

Loot is the library of games you own. Each purchase you record adds up to a clear picture of what you spent, what you got back, and how much you saved by buying on sale instead of at full price.

Recording a purchase

Add a game to Loot from its page or straight from your Picks. For each copy you can record the platform and store, the price you paid, the full price at the time, and the date. The two prices are what make the savings figure possible, so fill in both when you can.

Own the same game twice, for example on two platforms? Each copy is its own entry under a single game, so nothing is double counted by accident.

Reading the overview

The Overview panel on the Loot page shows four numbers:

• Games owned: how many different games are in your library.
• Spent: the total of everything you paid.
• Sold for: money you got back by selling copies.
• Saved: for each purchase, the full price minus what you paid, added up. A game bought at $30 that normally costs $60 saves $30. Purchases missing either price are left out rather than guessed.

Figures are stored in US dollars and shown in your chosen display currency, which you can change in Settings.

Selling a game

Mark a copy as sold and enter what you received. It then counts toward Sold for, so your real cost of ownership is easy to work out: spent, minus what you sold for.

Status, hours and ratings

Each game has a play status: Not played, Playing, Finished or Dropped. Use it to keep a backlog honest, then filter the library by status to answer questions like "what am I halfway through". You can also log hours played, sort by last played or hours, and rate and review games you have started or finished.

Setting a game back to Not played removes its rating and review, and so does deleting your last copy. LootPick asks before doing either.

Importing from Steam

If you connect Steam, your public library can be brought in so you do not have to add each game by hand. Steam does not share what you paid, so imported games have no price until you add one. Add prices to the games you care about and the totals update.

Making the totals useful

A few minutes of record keeping pays off. Compare Spent with Saved to see whether you really wait for sales, and use the status filter to notice games you bought but never started before you buy the next one. For deciding what to buy next, head back to your Picks.