Re: Steam Families

On 3/21/2024 2:21 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Thu, 21 Mar 2024 11:36:07 +0000, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:

On 21/03/2024 10:24, kyonshi wrote:

 

I find the playtime stat. basically useless as I tend to play a game,
leave it open and then comeback to it later. I also noticed that there
are games like Portal that I've played through I think three times and
the total playtime is 1 min.

 I've seen this too. Oddly, it seems to happen most with Valve's own
games. According to Steam, I've only played Portal for 85 minutes,
despite finishing it multiple times (I know it's a short game, but
c'mon!). Similarly, Steam says I've only logged 26 hours on "Half Life
2". But other games are affected too; "Batman: Arkham Asylum" (two
complete playthroughs) has only a 40 minute play-time.
 The 'time-played' stat is completely unreliable in my experience. It
doesn't always happen (my "Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim" remains fixed at
654hours, and has for years) but it happens often enough that I
wouldn't rely on it for anything except basic amusement purposes.
 

It for sure doesn't log anything if Steam doesn't see an online connection. And there have been games that I tried once for five minutes and then found running in the background two days later (putting Sonic 4 into my list of most-played games).
Still, I like looking at a list of the games I spent most time with. I don't need completely accurate accounting as long as it shows me what games I spent the most time with.