Keep track of time played with non-Steam games

[GAME GOD FLUENT]

Hello there.

I'm sure this has been suggested already, but I'd like to rekindle it, if possible.

I'd really LOVE to see Steam keep track of the amount of time played for non-Steam games that you've added to your account.

One of the main reasons I prefer Steam is because it keeps track of time played for all the Steam games. It would be great if we could extend that to non-Steam games as well.

Anyone else feel the same way? It may not seem like a big deal to some, but to me, it's pretty huge. It would really increase my love of Steam and almost guarantee I never go to another client.

What I would personally do is add all my GOG games to Steam so it would keep track of all the time played. Right now I would have to wait until GOG Galaxy comes out to do that when I could be doing it right in the Steam app.

What do you guys think? If you agree, post in this thread! Maybe with enough people backing this idea they will do it.

Thanks for reading and have a great day! :)

[munyun]

To me this would be a great feature

[GAME GOD FLUENT]

引用自 _(Shav)_：

To me this would be a great feature

It really would be. It would almost guarantee that all my games would be played with the Steam client, because I would have no need of anything else!

The reason I'm going to get GOG Galaxy and use is extensively is because it will keep track of time spent playing my GOG games (hopefully). If Steam added support for those games I wouldn't really even use Galaxy much because Steam would have everything I need.

Comon, Valve! Make it happen! :)

[Lantea]

Just started playing some gog games, and it would be great if Steam tracked the time. Small feature, but adds lots of value for people that like to see how much time they spent playing.


p.s. I know this is an old thread, but it was the best I found on the topic using search, and it would be a waste creating a new one.

[ReveN]

Good idea, but not that important and that urgent.

[WereCatf]

Could be easily abused. Valve can only know proper titles for games they are selling, but when adding a non-Steam game to the library you could give it any name you could imagine, including links to websites, personal insults and so on. It could also simply be used to DDoS Valve's servers by adding a bajillion non-Steam titles to your collection and giving them all a 255 character names and so on and so forth.

[Lantea]

引用自 WereCatf：

Could be easily abused. Valve can only know proper titles for games they are selling, but when adding a non-Steam game to the library you could give it any name you could imagine, including links to websites, personal insults and so on. It could also simply be used to DDoS Valve's servers by adding a bajillion non-Steam titles to your collection and giving them all a 255 character names and so on and so forth.

I am petty sure there are ways to prevent any such abuses. Plus the feature to track non-steam game time can be made to be completely offline and not affect any Valve infastructure, sure it might not be as accurate maybe, but its simply there for people to see roughly how much time they played a game.
As far as I am concerned it does not even have to be included in the all games played list with normal steam games, just have the timer on the games library page for non-steam games.

[WereCatf]

引用自 Lantea：

I am petty sure there are ways to prevent any such abuses.

The only way of doing that would be to start maintaining a database listing every other store's games, too. That's obviously not going to happen.

Plus the feature to track non-steam game time can be made to be completely offline and not affect any Valve infastructure, sure it might not be as accurate maybe, but its simply there for people to see roughly how much time they played a game.
As far as I am concerned it does not even have to be included in the all games played list with normal steam games, just have the timer on the games library page for non-steam games.

If you mean that the amount would only be stored on your local machine then sure, by all means, but many people have multiple computers and would then want the statistics to be automatically synced between those or they'd want their friends/someone else to be able to also see how much time they've spent in non-Steam games and therein lies the problem: it would no longer be "offline" and it would affect Valve's infrastructure.

[Lantea]

引用自 WereCatf：

引用自 Lantea：

I am petty sure there are ways to prevent any such abuses.

The only way of doing that would be to start maintaining a database listing every other store's games, too. That's obviously not going to happen.

Thats hardly the only way, it does not really matter what a person names the game, it should not really matter if someone decides to re-name a game to whatever even if its not a real game name; as suggested in another thread, it could be tracked based on the game's exe; and there could be limits to what you can name it;
I am not an expert on how to program such features, but imo compared to other steam features this should be as simple as it gets.

[RolandOfGilead]

I would like to have this feature.
As far as abuses, like putting in a weird string as the name, I see the names of games when someone in my friends list is in a non-steam game, so that's already possible as-is.