Stellaris
Worth it · Strategy · 2016
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
BUY IT.
Worth it at $14.99.
- Length
- 32.3h
- Value
- $0.46/hr
- Reviews
- 86% positive
Recent reviews trending down: 74% over the last 30 days against 86% all-time.
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Minimum on the Steam store: 4 GB of memory, 10 GB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux.
Explore a galaxy full of wonders in this sci-fi grand strategy game from Paradox Development Studios. Interact with diverse alien races, discover strange new worlds with unexpected events and expand the reach of your empire. Each new adventure holds almost limitless possibilities.
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
The value story
It has never been cheaper than $3.99. That was December 2024. It has been discounted 82 times in the 10 years tracked here, typically at 75 percent off, with about 6 weeks between sales. Today's $14.99 at 70 percent off still sits 276 percent above the floor, so a deeper cut exists in its history.
Against its own genre it lands in the top 3 percent on value. It is pricier than 99 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 90 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Sins of a Solar Empire®: Rebellion ($19.99, scores 92) beats it on value, while it beats Galactic Civilizations IV ($39.99, scores 25).
78 from critics against 86 percent from players, and the player number comes from people who own the game.
Steam's global achievement data says under 1 percent of players ever finish it. On a 32.3-hour game, that is a lot of paid-for hours most people never see. Players rate it 86 percent positive over its lifetime, but the last 30 days run 74 percent. Something recent has soured the room. This site sampled 800 of its Steam-purchase reviews; 3 were written by buyers who refunded it, sampled from reviews written June 2026 to September 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 52 percent of the 2,873 reviews written there were positive, against 86 percent overall, and those are 2 percent of everything written about it. It sells extras on top of the sticker price (cosmetic); the score docks it lightly for that.
32.3 hours to finish it, 416 to exhaust it. The completionist tail is 13 times the campaign.
10 years after release it still had 13.7K people in it at once.
The drop-off
40% start to <1% finishMost players never reach the end. On a 32.3-hour game, that's a lot you pay for and may never use. Steam global achievements
Players
13.7K players at peak in the last day.
The chart appears once this game has been counted more than once.Player counts via SteamSpy.
What players say
The game is a lot of fun. It's one of my favorite empire building games. But as with pretty much any Paradox game the there is a ton of DLC's many of which contain content that should realistically be part of the base game. Additionally, the pricing is very predatory although that's always been the case for Paradox games. Even after all that I still enjoyed the game enough to recommend it to others until today. I...
I am at the point where i cant recommend this, it was fun, real fun, but the blatant greed, horrible ai, bad mechanics and devs who seemingly want to pump out more dlcs rather than fix existing ones, and with dlcs that SHOULD be in the base game but just exist to feed the greed of paradox costing a total of like 375 bucks. its just not worth it
Bought this game to conquer the galaxy, ended up spending 9 hours managing my economy, arguing with space frogs over an asteroid, and somehow starting a war because I accidentally insulted a species I didn't even know existed. 10/10, would ruin my sleep schedule again.
Player reviews from Steam: the most helpful all-time, plus the newest that clear the same quality bar, with the hours each player had put in when they wrote it. The mix of Recommended and Not recommended follows the game's Steam ratio. Rotates daily. Opinions are theirs.
Cite this score
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Stellaris scores 69/100 on the BANG Score (worth it). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/281990/stellarisThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 12, price as of Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.