How can someone clock this game 4k of hours?

[SmudgyRotter]

I saw someone having 4k hours playtime of this game, and I genuinely want to know what you could play out of this game for 4k hours?

So I own this game on Epicstore, and I clocked it 236 hours, I’m in late game, but I have not finished the story yet. I know that this game is not really a sandbox rpg, it is not even an open world (the area probably has got expanded little more since when last time I played it, as more update today)

My top games that got most hours ever were Company of Heroes and Deep rock galactic. 2,347 hours and 1,820 hours. Then I had maybe about 15-20 other titles hours ranking average between 550-400-300-200-100 of hours, and then other titles, it goes down from there…anyway I have never had one title that would clock that many hours. For my two top title, COH, I have played ever since 2006; DRG, I’ve played since Jan2022. Reason I mentioned because those 2 games at least can be played online multiplayer, and they are sandbox in a way, even though they are just repetitive.

So I really genuinely want to know how and why for this game? I know that I probably have not played all the content that it can offer, but 4k-hours is insane. What are other possible, repeated gameplays can you get within this game? Anyone here has any insight that you can share?!

[TaylerBootz]

Was it a tester or a dev? YouTuber? Also, you'd be surprise how much time a person can put into a game if they really like it. I mean people still have Minecraft channels. I personally can't play any game for that long without serious breaks. My Portia time is just under 300 hours. That's with about 1 and a quarter playthroughs.

[Devilfish]

You think that's weird, there's a guy who has over 5k hours in Garfield Kart

[SmudgyRotter]

Originally posted by TaylerBootz:

Was it a tester or a dev? YouTuber? Also, you'd be surprise how much time a person can put into a game if they really like it. I mean people still have Minecraft channels. I personally can't play any game for that long without serious breaks. My Portia time is just under 300 hours. That's with about 1 and a quarter playthroughs.

I don’t know, I guess that I should just ask that person directly, but I doubt that I would ever get any response.

I mean, I don’t really question about the 4k hours of a game that a person can spend for . I mean, I myself have no life and I can’t judge others. The big question is for this game. Mind you that this game is not like Skyrim or Fallout 4, or any other title that has big reputation of modding, or can it? Can it be modded much to have more content? I just can’t see it though. This game is not really open world, I’m definitely sure of it, it is not a sandbox game either.

[SmudgyRotter]

Originally posted by Devilfish:

You think that's weird, there's a guy who has over 5k hours in Garfield Kart

Oh I saw one guy that got 48k hours on it…but I don’t even want to touch on it here, because it’s way beyond from another galaxy of craziness…

[Nemesis]

probably macro'ing when they are asleep to lvl up

[JVC]

There's no macro build up during sleep you only level up by actually playing. But some beta testers have a lot of hours. I used to do a lot of wiki work, so I have more than 500 hours. One of the previous wiki editors manually tested gifting values before people eventually decided to datamine those. That player has much more.

Also, there were a few cases during development where people had to start from scratch because the saves didn't survive content updates. So the dedicated testers did that. There were also a few times where the devs asked people to start from scratch since they'd changed something in the early game and wanted feedback on it.

[SmudgyRotter]

Originally posted by JVC:

There's no macro build up during sleep you only level up by actually playing. But some beta testers have a lot of hours. I used to do a lot of wiki work, so I have more than 500 hours. One of the previous wiki editors manually tested gifting values before people eventually decided to datamine those. That player has much more.

Also, there were a few cases during development where people had to start from scratch because the saves didn't survive content updates. So the dedicated testers did that. There were also a few times where the devs asked people to start from scratch since they'd changed something in the early game and wanted feedback on it.

Oh, but still, it sounds crazy to do that, to play or grind a single game for whole year long, or even longer… Especially if those people don’t get paid for it, and still had to buy the game.

Anyway, I guess that this can adequately answered my question, because I just can not understand how he/she would get that insane amount of hours of this game, when I can’t possibly see much of content that would fit with it.

[SimuLord]

The most hours I have in a game on Steam is a bit shy of 1,800 in American Truck Simulator—I've had the game since 2018, and it's my go-to game for playing after work or when listening to an audiobook or podcast. Five years is about 1,800 days or so (365 x 5 = 1,825), so it averages out to an hour a day.

Sandrock, on the other hand...yeesh. I have a full-time job, 40 hours a week, and that just means I've worked about 3,000 hours since the day Sandrock launched in Early Access. Anyone with 4,000 hours has played a solid 10 or 11 hours a day, 5 days a week (or 7-8 hours every calendar day with no breaks) since last May. That's...unhealthy.

[Yuriqa]

Some people have weird hours on many games... I think they use some kind of program to add more hours...

Once I saw one dude who played all his steam account games over 1000 hours and he have over 500 games...

[Yhtill]

Some people are 'pre-work' (kids). Some are retired. People find enjoyment where they can. Different strokes for different folks. Sandrock is a good, solid game.
Why ask why?
BE the ball. (Old movie reference there, haha)

[Neme]

all those hours are probably not actually played.. Welp, they might be but who knows these days considering there are apps like steamidle / idlesteam or whatever it was called, I remember seeing an app that you can use you cheese up your steam game hours several months back without actually playing it

[Cacheelma]

People play the game they enjoy for a long time. Crazy concept, I know.

[Sketch Elder]

Easiest way is to just leave the game running while you are doing other things. There are many screens that pause the game, but it still counts as time played even when there's nothing happening. Leaving the game running means you don't have to wait when you are ready to resume.

[syzara]

Half my clocked time is 'paused in background and forgot about it', because that's how my brain (doesn't) work.

The other half is having lots of saves bc I want to check out several romances and hate breaking up in-game.

[Zewtastic]

I have seen streamers rack up lot's of hours in games, but not really by doing much more than using them as a chat room, not especially playing the game.
But I doubt any streamer put 5K hours into Sandrock.
Most likely one of the team working on QA, Audio, modding, localization or otherwise and just leaving the game running a lot of the time.

I got to about 300hrs myself.