Multiplayer shooters, grand strategy games, and MMOs sure do eat up the hours.
You can sort your Steam library in various ways. Via release date, or size on disk, or percentage of completed achievements. One option seems to exist just to give you an existential crisis: Sort By Hours Played.
While it’s not going to record all the hours you put into MMOs with their own launchers or games you played GOG or Epic or whatever, there is still likely to be something on your list that makes you think about ways those hours could have been better spent, whether on a more enriching activity, or just on a more fulfilling game.
Nick Evanson, Hardware Writer: 1,1780 hours in Hearts of Iron 4. It’s a love-hate thing and it’s all about the ridiculous achievements. I’ve been trying for years to get 100% but every time I get to around the 75% mark, a new DLC comes out and I’m back to square one. One day Paradox will stop updating it and I’ll finally be in with a chance of getting them all. Until then, it’s just an endless slog of working through strategies to get a certain achievement and hating myself for doing it.
Chris Livingston, Senior Editor: According to Steam my most-played game is Team Fortress 2 (417 hours), which I played pretty much every night for about a couple years after its release and then essentially never touched again. It was a hangout game that I eventually ditched because, frankly, I was tired of getting stomped by people who actually get better at a game over 400+ hours, unlike myself who never improves no matter how many times I POOSH CART.
My runners-up are DayZ (370 hours), No Man’s Sky (266 hours), Skyrim (239 hours, though add another 40 for Special Edition), Elite Dangerous (226), and Plants Vs. Zombies (216).
But throw all that nonsense out. My most-played game is actually The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, but I didn’t play it on Steam, I played it on the disc games used to come on. I have two main character saves that combine to 500 hours, plus several side characters that probably make up another 100. Why? Cuz Oblivion rules and everything else drools, obviously.
Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: I think I’m probably the odd one out here, in that I don’t tend to spend a ton of time in any one game. To find my 1000+ hours examples you’d have to look to other launchers for games like Hearthstone, World of Warcraft, Legends of Runeterra, or League of Legends, but even then those are all in my ever more distant past.
I’ve at least got the near-200 hours in TF2, which feels like practically a career requirement on this website, and with similar chunks of time in both XCOM games, Slay the Spire, and Crusader Kings 2, I certainly fit a particular PC gaming stereotype.
I’m surprised Borderlands 2 is in there. I must have played a lot of it in co-op, even though now I could barely summon a mote of enthusiasm for the series. Balatro is a more feelgood inclusion—a real testament to the hooks it got into me this year that it’s already my eighth most-played Steam game ever. I think if LocalThunk ever releases an expansion it’ll probably end up at number one.
Mollie Taylor, Features Producer: I’ve put my hands up on multiple occasions at this point and admitted that I spent a good chunk of my life as a console gamer—listen, I was a child of divorce, I travelled between houses a lot, it was easier and cheaper to cart one PlayStation around as and when I pleased than it was an entire desktop or expensive gaming laptop—so my Steam numbers are a little lacking.
I’m also guilty of spending a lot of time with other non-Steam launchers. I’ve racked up a healthy triple-digit playtime on The Sims 4 over in the EA app, and I’d rather not try and guesstimate how many hours I’ve sunk into numerous gacha games over the years.
Honestly, my biggest surprise here is that I put over 30 hours into Halo Infinite. I mean, I barely even remember playing that game for an hour, let alone an entire day’s worth of hours and then some. I swear I’ll try and play more things that aren’t Final Fantasy 14 in the future, too. Maybe.
Jake Tucker, Editorial Director, PC Gaming Show: This omits the 5,000 hours (and counting) I’ve put into Escape From Tarkov, but the most baffling thing is I don’t even think Dota 2 is a particularly good game, I just keep playing it anyway.
