Hours Counter Broken

[Doulos]

This is something I have not really paid attention to in the last few years. The last month or so I have taken more interest in observing the amount of time I have in game.

I noticed that the Steam hour counter for games does weird things. Two examples are my time in Elite Dangerous and my time in Arma III .

For ED I recorded 10 hours time in a day at 200 hours starting. The next day I was at 212, I come back the third day and I am 210. It bounced around a few more times which caused me a lot of confusion.

My Arma III time was 498 hours about a month ago. I was excited to break the 500 mark with my friend and now I am in the 480s.

It really is not a serious issue for me - I am just curious if anyone else has encountered these issues?

[Longhaul]

Funny you bring this up.... happened to me while i was playing DDO. My game played time backpeddled about 3 hours....

[Doulos]

Originally posted by Daynox:

Funny you bring this up.... happened to me while i was playing DDO. My game played time backpeddled about 3 hours....

Like I said - I only really started paying attention recently. I wonder how many hours have been miscounted overall. It's an interesting phenomena as I have been told or "informed" from another thread the counter is only checking runtime of .exe in system.

I hope someone has insight into this.

[AmsterdamHeavy]

If you connection to Steam is lost (generally recognized by Friends dropping out), then your time is not recorded.

That is the simple answer; your time is only recorded when you are connected to Steam's servers. If you lose connection, the record of your time played is lost for that session.

That is the result of other discussions on the topic.

To take it a step further; no, there is no plan or intent to fix it, because it is not a "problem" in that it is related to connectivity and systems that go down for maintenance, or because of your own local connection, potentially.

[Eldin]

When you lose connection to Steam time in your library will get messed up, but time in your Recent Activity will be correct.

I noticed this because I never turn off my PC and I put it to sleep instead.
If I played game for 10 hours and put PC to sleep without exiting the game, and then wake up PC after 6 hours, Library will show 16 hours played.
But after some time when it fetches playtime data from Steam servers it goes back to 10 hours.

Same happens if you just disconnect/lose internet connection while playing a game.

[Doulos]

So I get your guys point - but for Elite Dangerous for example, I cannot play without online connection to ED servers. It wasn't a Tuesday so no Steam downtime. For one of my days I was in a Steam call with someone while playing so the steam chat was still functioning.

I feel like there is more to it than just a disconnect from Steam.

[AmsterdamHeavy]

Originally posted by Doulos:

So I get your guys point - but for Elite Dangerous for example, I cannot play without online connection to ED servers. It wasn't a Tuesday so no Steam downtime. For one of my days I was in a Steam call with someone while playing so the steam chat was still functioning.

I feel like there is more to it than just a disconnect from Steam.

Being in game has nothing to do with the client talking to Steam servers. Thats not even a Valve game.

Its very simple: when the client is talking to Steam, hours get counted. When the client does not talk to Steam, no hours for the session are counted.

The best indicator of this, but not the only, is your connection to the Friends network.

[Doulos]

Originally posted by AmsterdamHeavy:

Originally posted by Doulos:

So I get your guys point - but for Elite Dangerous for example, I cannot play without online connection to ED servers. It wasn't a Tuesday so no Steam downtime. For one of my days I was in a Steam call with someone while playing so the steam chat was still functioning.

I feel like there is more to it than just a disconnect from Steam.

Being in game has nothing to do with the client talking to Steam servers. Thats not even a Valve game.

Its very simple: when the client is talking to Steam, hours get counted. When the client does not talk to Steam, no hours for the session are counted.

The best indicator of this, but not the only, is your connection to the Friends network.

Yes I understand how networks work. My point was that I had maintained network connection to play that game, so I wasn't offline at any point. I was in a call for one of the days which is a confirmation that I was in fact connected to Steam servers.

My point here is that there is more to it then just being connected to the servers causing or not causing the runtime reports.

[Doulos]

Originally posted by AmsterdamHeavy:

Originally posted by Doulos:

So I get your guys point - but for Elite Dangerous for example, I cannot play without online connection to ED servers. It wasn't a Tuesday so no Steam downtime. For one of my days I was in a Steam call with someone while playing so the steam chat was still functioning.

I feel like there is more to it than just a disconnect from Steam.

Being in game has nothing to do with the client talking to Steam servers. Thats not even a Valve game.

Its very simple: when the client is talking to Steam, hours get counted. When the client does not talk to Steam, no hours for the session are counted.

The best indicator of this, but not the only, is your connection to the Friends network.

I put in 10 hours of Arma III yesterday and I am back to 486 hours... AGAIN... which means there is more to it than just being offline or online. Those hours are reported and then not counted.

[Doulos]

Now it's 485...

[↑↑↓↓←→←→BASelect]

I have this happening also and i'm always online when i'm playing. So it's happening online also.

[Doulos]

Arma III is now at 490 hours. Played another 9 hours yesterday.

Started at 486 - was all online and Steam never suffered disconnects.

[Jackhammer (Wholf)]

Originally posted by Doulos:

This is something I have not really paid attention to in the last few years. The last month or so I have taken more interest in observing the amount of time I have in game.

I noticed that the Steam hour counter for games does weird things. Two examples are my time in Elite Dangerous and my time in Arma III .

For ED I recorded 10 hours time in a day at 200 hours starting. The next day I was at 212, I come back the third day and I am 210. It bounced around a few more times which caused me a lot of confusion.

My Arma III time was 498 hours about a month ago. I was excited to break the 500 mark with my friend and now I am in the 480s.

It really is not a serious issue for me - I am just curious if anyone else has encountered these issues?

Had this with CS:GO as well, i played more hours on CS:GO then it shows.

[Ç!ｲ!乙3η-ﾒ]

Silly question could this be related to players being banned and counters being reset?

Making it like a match/game never took place once scores, time played and stats are deleted...

[Doulos]

I have no bans - the games I play except counter strike typically don't have matches or scores. My account is entirely clean of VAC or game bans.

I don't know about anyone else in this thread though.

[Ç!ｲ!乙3η-ﾒ]

I mean bans from other players that were on servers with you, if they get banned the games/matches get deleted apparently, then and points or stats of any kind get deleted also..

*edit*

Did not read correctly before i replied and saw after what you said about no matches or scores.....