Pause playtime tracking while AFK

[Cody]

EDIT: Some people seem to think this is meant to somehow game the system and circumvent the 2 hour return window. I don't care if it keeps the current playtime tracking for the first 2 hours how it is now, and then a new method of playtime tracking kicks in after that. I'd like to play a game for 50 hours and have it say I played for 50 hours, not 60 hours because I was afk for 10. This is something that modern consoles have figured out years ago, but somehow PC still has yet to figure out.

From my understanding the way Steam currently tracks playtime is to just check if the game's exe file is running. This can lead to inaccurate playtime numbers if you need to pause and step away from your PC for a while, but you can't shut down the game because you aren't at a place where you can save your progress.

Steam could implement a way to make this number more accurate by pausing the playtime counter while the Steam Overlay is open. This is something that consoles are already doing, so I don't see why Steam shouldn't be able to as well. When you bring up the PS menu on PS5, or the home menu on the Switch, it pauses the playtime tracking. I imagine that would probably be the easiest solution to implement since Steam would know whether or not the overlay is active.

EDIT: I thought that the Steam Overlay worked similar to the home menu on PS5 and Switch where it stops you from interacting with the game. I didn't know you could pin things and still play.

But another solution might be to use something similar to what they do to change a player's status to away. After a couple minutes of inactivity, Steam sets your status as away. They could use that same logic to track whether or not a player is AFK during a game and pause playtime tracking. But this might not be as accurate if the player is watching a long cutscene or something.

Would Steam be able to track what window you currently have active on your PC? If you tab out of the game would they be able to detect that and pause the playtime tracking?

[Pscht]

So, you are going to pin an element of the overlay, play through a fifty hours game, and refund it because it stopped counting. Genius.

[Cody]

Oh I didn't even know that was a thing. I thought the overlay stopped you from interacting with the game

[Crazy Tiger]

How is Steam supposed to know that you're actually AFK? Plenty of games I play where I think about things and thusly don't press buttons in the game for a short while, for example.

I'm not a fan of the player friend status either, mind. I dislike that it quickly sets you as "away".

[Cody]

Other than the away status the only thing I can think of would be Steam checking which program is the active window. If it's the game exe, it should count play time, if it isn't, it stops counting play time. If you tab out of the game, it would no longer be the active window.

I'm not sure about about Mac, but for Windows it doesn't look like it would be too hard to implement: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/winuser/nf-winuser-getforegroundwindow

[Start_Running]

Цитата допису Cody:

Other than the away status the only thing I can think of would be Steam checking which program is the active window. If it's the game exe, it should count play time, if it isn't, it stops counting play time. If you tab out of the game, it would no longer be the active window.

And yet there are literally a whole class of ggames that are built around the player doing other things in other apps.

M'dude. If you're going to be afk for any actual length of time. CLOSE THE GAME.

[76561198407601200]

Цитата допису Cody:

From my understanding the way Steam currently tracks playtime is to just check if the game's exe file is running. This can lead to inaccurate playtime numbers if you need to pause and step away from your PC for a while, but you can't shut down the game because you aren't at a place where you can save your progress.

Steam could implement a way to make this number more accurate by pausing the playtime counter while the Steam Overlay is open. This is something that consoles are already doing, so I don't see why Steam shouldn't be able to as well. When you bring up the PS menu on PS5, or the home menu on the Switch, it pauses the playtime tracking. I imagine that would probably be the easiest solution to implement since Steam would know whether or not the overlay is active.

But another solution might be to use something similar to what they do to change a player's status to away. After a couple minutes of inactivity, Steam sets your status as away. They could use that same logic to track whether or not a player is AFK during a game and pause playtime tracking. But this might not be as accurate if the player is watching a long cutscene or something.

EDIT: I thought that the Steam Overlay worked similar to the home menu on PS5 and Switch where it stops you from interacting with the game. I didn't know you could pin things and still play.

Would Steam be able to track what window you currently have active on your PC? If you tab out of the game would they be able to detect that and pause the playtime tracking?

Close the game if you are going afk. If you are in a spot where you can't save in the game then contact the developer and ask if they can implement better saving in their game.

[Black Blade]

Цитата допису Pscht:

So, you are going to pin an element of the overlay, play through a fifty hours game, and refund it because it stopped counting. Genius.

I will say that if this is just about time tracking, I don't think it has to be the same as refund timer, like you can most likely just seprate them, so one is for show and one is for refunds and so on
On any case I don't think there is much of a way for Steam to tie it to the game, and if at all it may need to be something the game needs to implement to allow for anything of this sort, even that I am not sure how many developers will care enugth to put in something to track that
So or so I do not think they tie it to the refund system, simply as pepole will always find a way to abuse it, like trick Steam to think the game went into stopping to play even if not, the only case it maybe can work is in a multiplayer only as at least there they can track server connection time over just how long the game is running, but for anything single player without any server cant see much of a way to really do a trusted track of time and how much its not there

[Cody]

Цитата допису Start_Running:

And yet there are literally a whole class of ggames that are built around the player doing other things in other apps.

M'dude. If you're going to be afk for any actual length of time. CLOSE THE GAME.

I haven't played any games like you mentioned so I'm not sure how they work.

Plus I'm not sure why this topic makes you so angry. Sometimes things randomly come up in life and closing the game at that exact moment would cause you to lose progress if you aren't at a save point. I could be just going to the bathroom, but it turns out that I'll actually be afk for an hour because someone I live with needed help with something. You can't plan for that.

PS5 and Switch give you an option for this by allowing you to bring up the home menu. It pauses playtime tracking. It seems silly that PC is meant to be the superior place to game, but can't even solve a problem that consoles have solved years ago.

Цитата допису The Living Tribunal:

Close the game if you are going afk. If you are in a spot where you can't save in the game then contact the developer and ask if they can implement better saving in their game.

Am I meant to contact every developer of every game ever made? I haven't played any game that has a save system as convenient as an emulator save state.

Цитата допису Black Blade:

I will say that if this is just about time tracking, I don't think it has to be the same as refund timer, like you can most likely just seprate them, so one is for show and one is for refunds and so on

Yeah this is a good point. I don't even think that they would have to separate it. They could also just start tracking play time more accurately after the first 2 hours.

[76561198407601200]

Цитата допису Cody:

Цитата допису The Living Tribunal:

Close the game if you are going afk. If you are in a spot where you can't save in the game then contact the developer and ask if they can implement better saving in their game.

Am I meant to contact every developer of every game ever made? I haven't played any game that has a save system as convenient as an emulator save state.

To correct you no I did not state contact every developer of every game ever made, contact the developers of the games you are playing that do not have a on the fly save feature and ask if they can implement it in their games. After all it is you going afk and not closing the game, steam simply keeps track of the game running. Also cyberpunk has this feature, just an example of 1 game, others do as well.

[Black Blade]

Цитата допису Cody:

PS5 and Switch give you an option for this by allowing you to bring up the home menu. It pauses playtime tracking. It seems silly that PC is meant to be the superior place to game, but can't even solve a problem that consoles have solved years ago.

Well how bit of a problem is it, I feel changes a lot on how much effort someone may put into it
Beside if we are talking about the matter of refunds that matter more
Then the fact is Consoles have full controls on them self, when you go into the home they know your at home becouse they made it
On PC when you go to home Steam is just a software running on the PC, someone can shove stuff in there, change settings set diffrent options to break the know of Steam that you played games
It may sound like a simple idea, but it can be very complicated becouse the PC just offers more to the user, and overall less to the developer for the game, when in console you know what you develop for, you know if its running good for you 99% it runs good for everyone, you know that if somone is at home, they are ont playing the game in the same time
PC is harder to know what is going on, becouse its open, and the user has more control then the developer on it

[ุ]

They only track playtime by how long the .exe is open. They don't track activity.

[Cody]

Цитата допису Black Blade:

On PC when you go to home Steam is just a software running on the PC, someone can shove stuff in there, change settings set diffrent options to break the know of Steam that you played games

Yeah this is a fair point, but I don't see why the current implementation would be any less problematic than having something else. Instead of just tracking if the exe is running, you could instead see if the exe is the the active window running in the foreground. If someone figures out a way to trick Steam into thinking the game isn't the foreground application, I don't see how they wouldn't also be able to figure out how to trick Steam into thinking that the exe isn't running at all.

[BJWyler]

Цитата допису Cody:

Цитата допису Black Blade:

On PC when you go to home Steam is just a software running on the PC, someone can shove stuff in there, change settings set diffrent options to break the know of Steam that you played games

Yeah this is a fair point, but I don't see why the current implementation would be any less problematic than having something else. Instead of just tracking if the exe is running, you could instead see if the exe is the the active window running in the foreground. If someone figures out a way to trick Steam into thinking the game isn't the foreground application, I don't see how they wouldn't also be able to figure out how to trick Steam into thinking that the exe isn't running at all.

Programs such as SAM mimic game calls to Steam, allowing it to believe the game is running, even if the game isn't even installed.

At the end of the day, this is a "you issue" that a very small group of people get bent out of shape about. Hell, I have OCD, and afk play time doesn't bother me. I have played plenty of games where I was waiting for something to happen in game and tabbed out to another window. This essentially amounts to a non-issue on an open platform like the PC that nothing really needs to be fixed. If it bothers you that much, track your playtime manually with a spreadsheet.

[Cody]

Цитата допису BJWyler:

Цитата допису Cody:

Yeah this is a fair point, but I don't see why the current implementation would be any less problematic than having something else. Instead of just tracking if the exe is running, you could instead see if the exe is the the active window running in the foreground. If someone figures out a way to trick Steam into thinking the game isn't the foreground application, I don't see how they wouldn't also be able to figure out how to trick Steam into thinking that the exe isn't running at all.

Programs such as SAM mimic game calls to Steam, allowing it to believe the game is running, even if the game isn't even installed.

At the end of the day, this is a "you issue" that a very small group of people get bent out of shape about. He'll, I have OCD, and ask play time doesn't bother me. I have played plenty of games where I was waiting for something to happen in game and tabbed out to another window. This essentially amounts to a non-issue on an open platform like the PC that nothing really needs to be fixed. If it bothers you that much, track your playtime manually with a spreadsheet.

I don't think this is a fair answer. If playtime was only important for determining whether or not a refund could be made they wouldn't even bother tracking it past two hours. A lot of game developers also spend time and money adding an ingame playtime counter. They wouldn't waste time and money on this if people don't care about this. Just because you don't care about something doesn't mean that others don't.

[BJWyler]

Цитата допису Cody:

Цитата допису BJWyler:

Programs such as SAM mimic game calls to Steam, allowing it to believe the game is running, even if the game isn't even installed.

At the end of the day, this is a "you issue" that a very small group of people get bent out of shape about. He'll, I have OCD, and ask play time doesn't bother me. I have played plenty of games where I was waiting for something to happen in game and tabbed out to another window. This essentially amounts to a non-issue on an open platform like the PC that nothing really needs to be fixed. If it bothers you that much, track your playtime manually with a spreadsheet.

I don't think this is a fair answer. If playtime was only important for determining whether or not a refund could be made they wouldn't even bother tracking it past two hours. A lot of game developers also spend time and money adding an ingame playtime counter. They wouldn't waste time and money on this if people don't care about this. Just because you don't care about something doesn't mean that others don't.

And just because you do doesn't mean the vast majority of gamers care one whit about it, or are in any conceivable way bothered in the slightest about how much afk time they spent in a game.