The game in my Steam library with the most hours played is…PAYDAY 2.

But I didn’t actually play a thousand hours of it. In the late 2010s, the heat in my condo barely worked and our self-managed association refused to acknowledge it because “nobody else [was] having problems with their heat.” I had all the windows plasticed up with heavy blankets literally nailed to the wall. I had to abandon the living room and bedroom entirely. I emptied the smallest room (12x10) and moved my mattress and desk in there…In addition to the playpen for my two rabbits that took up the rest of the free space.

You might be wondering what that has to do with PAYDAY 2. Well…the game revved up my video card to max on the main menu so my PC became a supplementary heat source at night…

Good times. Thanks, PAYDAY devs!

ETA: In the spring, the guy who handled yardwork noticed the flowerbed was kind of sinking on one side of the building. That’s when they discovered a leak in the radiator line…small enough that 11 units didn’t notice but big enough for the water pressure to not reach the farthest unit from the boiler…the unit I owned…

I was gonna check my Steam library for the numbers, but the real answer probably is Shattered Pixel Dungeon on my phone.

When I was a teen I played WoW from vanilla through Cata… Had over a full year of in game /played time on just my main.

…and I made a lot of alts.

100% full-blown addicted.

Blizzard is actually the one example of enshittification that I can actually be thankful for - I didn’t really ever quit; they just stopped supplying my drug of choice. They definitely had the power to keep me enthralled, but instead shifted to a younger and younger target audience as I was ofc aging the opposite direction.

The Kung-Fu-Panda xpac trailer was finally my cue to accept that my dealer wasn’t going to provide that fix anymore.

Then I started making healthy life decisions discovered Ark >_<

Edit - …Ark owned my life for a bit, too:

Factorio.

Rimworld 2300 hours or so

The Bethesda RPGs: Skyrim, Morrowind, Fallout series (although most of the hours probably into NV, which wasn’t actually Bethesda).

Minecraft, Factorio, Satisfactory and Dyson Sphere program have the most real playtime, but idle games have the top slots.

Terraria

Minecraft, and the number is still growing.

Steam says my top 3, in order, are ARMA3 (though more than half of that has to be with the game minimized as I work on scripts for mods), Team Fortress 2, and Rocket League. All have over 2000 hours, Arma 3 has slightly over 3k.

However, from 1997 to 2007 (literally haven’t played it since The Orange Box released), I was playing Ultima Online for at least 8 hours a day, every day. So if that kept track of my play time, it would likely be numero uno. Diablo 2 and EverQuest would be right behind it.

Team Fortress 2

My list of multiple hundreds/thousands of hours include, in no particular order;

• Minecraft (unknown, been playing since browser alpha demo)
• Skyrim (600)
• Rocket League (4000)
• Fall Guys (1500)
• Stardew Valley (unknown, play multiple saves a year on different platforms)
• Vampire Survivors (400)
• No Man’s Sky (1200)

STALKER and The Elder Scrolls probably hold the record. I may have wasted even more time in my life on World of Warcraft, but I feel like that doesn’t count since you’re just in a fucking trance for several years until you finally break away.

EverQuest was my jam back in the day. It ruined highschool for me. Nearly 5 straight years of farming and raids.

I wouldn’t do anything different though. I met some awesome people that got me through the awkward years of high school when the internet was still somewhat new.

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