Non-Steam games playtime tracking

[Krunky]

This feature would be amazing. So every game you add into steam that is not from steam would be tracked. So steam would track your game time and maybe achievements in the future.

[Gwarsbane]

Since its not a steam game, why should they track its time. And since its not a steam game, it would not know when achievements are hit because it requires that info to be passed onto steam from the game, which would require it to be a steam game.

I just see this as a waste in server time and database space. Individually it might not seem like much, but there are 150+ million active accounts, 300+ million accounts in total.

[Krunky]

Originally posted by Gwarsbane:

Since its not a steam game, why should they track its time. And since its not a steam game, it would not know when achievements are hit because it requires that info to be passed onto steam from the game, which would require it to be a steam game.

I just see this as a waste in server time and database space. Individually it might not seem like much, but there are 150+ million active accounts, 300+ million accounts in total.

I know that. Im an IT guy. But basically it would be nice to know how many hours have you played. Besides that adding just one more data (playtime) is no big deal, since all the playtime tracking is done on your PC.
Achievements could be implemented if the game developer partnered up with Steam and Steam could create a Open-Source project for that. So that is not a big deal.

1 charaster of text is 8 bytes of memory. If you have played 10 000 hours that data to store that info per user would only use up maximum 100 bytes of memory on their server per non-steam game. That is not a big deal since they are giving free space for screenshots, forums, game saves,....!


Think twice before you post. No offence these are just plain facts. :)

1 byte == 0,000001 MB

If we say that for this non-game playtime tracking is being used 1 MB per user (which is only a very rare case scenario) they would need 300 million MB which is only 30 TB of data (not a big deal for Steam)

[nealiosis]

I wrote a tiny utility to do this...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRSY0bcxuX0

[Rakilonn]

So there is that or the good old Xfire.
Steam should add a tracking feature just like Xfire though. It should be not that hard.

Edit : Damn Xfire has been shut down apparently and his successor is Evolve apparently.

[999999999]

Valve tracks it just in case you try to refund it and say you played 1 hour. When you really played it for an extra 49 hours offline.

[cinedine]

Originally posted by Krunky SLO:

I know that. Im an IT guy. But basically it would be nice to know how many hours have you played. Besides that adding just one more data (playtime) is no big deal, since all the playtime tracking is done on your PC.
Achievements could be implemented if the game developer partnered up with Steam and Steam could create a Open-Source project for that. So that is not a big deal.

1 charaster of text is 8 bytes of memory. If you have played 10 000 hours that data to store that info per user would only use up maximum 100 bytes of memory on their server per non-steam game. That is not a big deal since they are giving free space for screenshots, forums, game saves,....!


Think twice before you post. No offence these are just plain facts. :)

1 byte == 0,000001 MB

If we say that for this non-game playtime tracking is being used 1 MB per user (which is only a very rare case scenario) they would need 300 million MB which is only 30 TB of data (not a big deal for Steam)

Wow ... There is so much wrong in this post ... from basic maths to basic understanding of computers.

[wuddih]

i certainly want to read on every 2nd profile that someone played 30 hours with my mom.

the thread is also from february.

[DesruX]

As a platform they should consider all options of providing added user value that keeps engagement on the platform. This seems like a no-brainer. Telemetry on non steam games would also be insightful for Steam.. Some product manager is dropping the ball on this..

[PXL]

Seeing as you dredged up the thread ...

I wouldn’t be surprised if Valve was already collecting data like this - it would be to their benefit to know these things.