What are your most-played games on Steam, and why have you spent so many hours on them?
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. Everything else feels like it’s tied to a zeitgeist. I got into PUBG when everyone else did, Football Manager 2020 as a lockdown hobby, and Rainbow Six Siege when it was a good game.
The most recent explosion is Space Station 14, which I love to put on while I work, connecting to a server in observe mode and watching other players going about their lives like my own personal terrarium.
Joshua Wolens, News Writer: I might be unique at PCG in not having a multiplayer game in my most-played. This is because I have no friends have excellent taste in singleplayer RPGs and map-painting games. Some of them are easy to explain: I’ve replayed pretty much all of these games, and things like New Vegas, Mass Effect, Spelunky, and MGS5 are there specifically because I also went out of my way to get every achievement in them even after pouring hundreds of hours in. CK2, EU4, and Stellaris are self-explanatory—Paradox games eat time.
The only outlier, really, is Skyrim, which I don’t particularly like. Blame my younger brother, who put a whole bunch of time into the game on my account when he was a wee’un.
Sean Martin, Senior Guides Writer: What can I say? I like making little men run around and stab each other. Total War is one of the series that got me into PC gaming and there aren’t many examples of a format which has been so successfully iterated upon over the years. The worrying part is that this doesn’t take into account anything I played before 2016, such as my countless hours in Rome and Medieval Total War, my obsession with Fallout and Elder Scrolls, or my console gaming.
I’ve also been playing Destiny 2 since Shadowkeep, so not all that long, but new dungeons, raids, and fun build stuff keeps me coming back.
Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: Obviously the big number here is Destiny 2, a game that—for all of Bungie’s many missteps—remains a fun shooter full of cool guns. That 3,000+ hours accounts for a lot of different experiences, from leading friends through their first raids, to tense solo flawless dungeon attempts, to just kicking back with some TV on the second screen and farming for a specific role of whatever the hot new gun is. I imagine there’s a few hundred hours in there that were purely dedicated to helping friends clean their vaults.
I think the more surprising thing for me is how many of the games at the top of my list were ones I started playing this year. The relative lack of major, obvious blockbusters has made it a great time for exploring niches, and the result is games like Balatro, Satisfactory, and Against the Storm—all games I played for the first time this year—shooting up to the top of my most-played list.
Lauren Morton, Associate Editor: I’m like Mollie in that my Steam hours don’t really tell the full picture by a long shot because I spend so much time in other launchers. The real highest-hour-count games not pictured here are years of Minecraft, Sims 4, Red Dead Online, and Guild Wars 2. I’ve also definitely got double that Elder Scrolls Online hour count in its own launcher before I download it on Steam and easily another 200 hours of Stardew Valley on my Nintendo Switch.
Honestly I’m kind of proud of how varied my taste is here though. I at one point played a lot of H1Z1 and PUBG when they kicked off but I’m also a woman of taste with the original Baldur’s Gate and my niche indie darling Book of Travels. I’m a little appalled that I managed to put 130 hours into Thatgamecompany’s cozy live service game Sky: Children of the Light since its PC launch this spring. I really still am an MMO sicko at heart.
Natanael Albuquerque, Social Media Editor: Certified GOG user here. Aside from ranking Football Managers from best to worst, my Steam is divided between an account for regular play, and an account for single player games. Like Robin, my LoL + GOG hours trumps my Steam page, and I can’t exactly say how much time I’ve got on emulation.
Honestly, now that I know I’ve probably got more lifetime hours in League than our hardcore Destiny vets, I’m happy I’ve quit.
Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: I rather like Final Fantasy 14 to this day, which is why it’s so far up on that list (I spend a lot of time roleplaying in it, as well, which makes me feel a little better. At least it’s a creative and social hobby). The rest of these, though, are games I spent playing in my misspent youth; I left my Dota 2 phase behind me years ago, and I only touched Champions Online in this decade because I was writing an article about it. Baldur’s Gate 3 is an obvious inclusion, because I have completed 2.8 playthroughs (I gave up on my evil one in Act 3), and it’s likely to see another 100 hours when Patch 8 comes out and I have all those yummy subclasses to muck about with.
Outside of that and, say, Elden Ring? This is mostly a historical record of a time where I got to play a lot more videogames, and spent a lot less time writing about them. Special shout out to Mount & Blade: Warband, which had shockingly complex and reflex-based PvP combat with a skill ceiling higher than the Sistine Chapel.
Lincoln Carpenter, News Writer: Looking at my most-played Steam games always involves an amount of mourning for me, and not because I’ve apparently clocked over 1,400 hours in Warframe (having reliable access to a free-to-play game for over a decade can do terrible things). Rather, it’s because I’m forced to relive the loss of Marvel Heroes, Gazillion’s Diablo-like superhero ARPG that launched in 2013, in which I spent more than 1,000 hours clicking around as various Marvel guys while listening to podcasts. Seems like a weird combo on paper, but it turns out isometric ARPG combat is a perfect fit for playing as superhumans who can sleepwalk their way through throwdowns with roomfuls of thugs. The game had a lackluster start, but Gazillion eventually built a real talent for designing abilities and animations that embodied each hero’s schtick; thundering through Dr. Doom’s castle as Thor or somersaulting across the chaos of Midtown Mayhem as Spider-Man felt exactly as like imagine you’d imagine it would from seeing it in a comic page.
My Wolverine bleed builds and Dr. Doom sorcery setups were immaculate. The damage numbers from my Captain America’s torqued shield throws were a thing of beauty. Even as the MCU started to become exhausting to endure, my love for Marvel Heroes held—until Gazillion abruptly shuttered in 2017 when Disney pulled their license amidst harassment allegations leveraged against the studio’s CEO. Every now and then, I’ll glance at the Steam discussion forums, where former players are still leaving adding replies to a 275-page thread titled, simply, “Bring the game back :(“
Some wounds never heal.
Unfortunate that I can’t see the sum total of Dwarf Fortress hours I’ve accumulated across different installs and PCs since I was 16, though. Time to boost my numbers with the Steam version, I guess.
Andy Chalk, News Lead: I like singleplayer games.
(I’m still playing Cyberpunk, I doubt there’s enough left to surpass Elden Ring but one never knows.)
Morgan Park, Staff Writer: Holy crap, Andy.
My most-played list is led by three multiplayer FPSes that have carved out a permanent residence in my brain—Siege, Day of Defeat: Source, and Hunt: Showdown. Those Siege hours don’t factor in my PS4 or Xbox One playtime, so the real number is well over 2,000 these days. Day of Defeat was the first PC shooter I ever got into, partially because I joined a role-playing army unit led by a 70-year-old vet from Canada.
It’s really funny to see Mount & Blade up there because I’ve never played the base game—all that playtime is in the Napoleonic Wars multiplayer expansion.
Nice to see one 2024 game break onto the list: Helldivers 2 is my personal GOTY and it’s so good even my partner, who can be pretty picky about shooters, adores it.
Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: I’m mostly proud of my most-playeds, with the notable exception of Destiny 2. I’m nowhere near Phil, Tim, or Sean’s hours, but it was my “early pandemic misery” game, and it’s gonna take a long damn time to knock it from the top spot with a diet of mostly singleplayer stuff.
I also gotta say that the messed-up, depreciated, and delisted original Steam release of Dragon Age 2 being up there feels like an honor. Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk are notable omissions for me since I own both of those on GOG instead.
