Games are short (5 mins). Queues are short (less than 1 min). Cross platform. Runs on Linux. Controller support (preferred). Easy to understand, but high skill ceiling. Amateur leagues are fun. Keeps my reflexes sharp. Can turn chat off. A decent esports scene.

Did not care much for the expansion, just didn't like the game play. Didn't even finish it, so it is almost all base game and mods.

I have been playing Unreal Tournament (1999) since 2000. It is impossible for me to tally up those hours.

Final Fantasy XIV and it's not even close... need to grind to get my girl new outfits

I've been playing since mid-2020 now and mostly spend my time either playing the story, doing side-content or making pretty screenshots of new glamours

This isn't a recent photo but also I havent played much since switching to PC sims

I haven't touched it in years, but I don't think anything is going to surpass World of Warcraft in hours played anytime soon.

Next up would be Monster Hunter World and Dark Souls III with 2000+ hours each.

I’ve got over 2500 hours in Civ VI, and probably double that or more for all previous versions of Civ

I actually just started playing it again after a nearly 2 year long break too, so that can't possibly turn out to be a bad life decision.

According to Steam it's Terraria with over 1200 hours. I bought it in 2012 and have replayed it regularly alone and with friends.

My second place isn't even close, and it's not actually a game. I bought Aseprite during the summer sale last year to see if I could stumble my way to something resembling visual art and I have about 250 hours logged, though I think a lot of that is me leaving the app open overnight.

Late to the party, but for me Endless Sky: https://github.com/endless-sky

As far as I know, it's the only open source and crowed developed game out there.

If you remember EV series, it's basically that. But better and under constant development.

I don’t have an exact number but if I had to guess it’s Minecraft. Over all those years, quite a few hours must have added up. I think that has to be much more than any of my Steam games.

Minecraft.

It doesn't keep track in general, but I've had multiple worlds go over 1000 hours individually.

Red light, green light

About to play a couple more rounds now on my way to the grocery store

Eve online, 11.6k hours. Much of that time was running multiple clients too. It's a young persons game, I no longer have the time.

Skullgirls, for sure. Steam has me at over 1800 hours, but I've also played at locals and tournaments. It had 14 characters for the longest time, but now it's got 18, and the ways you can combine them are nearly limitless, so there's a high chance one of its most powerful strategies hasn't even been discovered yet even though it's now 14 years old. Now and then I'll see a tournament match where someone brought out something brand new that I've never seen before, and I love it for that.

No Man's Sky 1556.5hrs

Team Fortress 2

Rimworld

I don't have specific numbers since some of these games were played on various platforms or outside of environment which keeps track of play time. Still, these are the things that come to mind in regards to where I spent most of my game time.

I'm putting each title into a spoiler to avoid a huge wall of text. I tend to get a bit rambly when talking about games, sorry.

Civilisation V

I never played IV and I don't really like VI, Civ V however managed to grab me in a way few other 4X game could. I haven't played it in a few years but I still remember the feeling of "one more turn" - this stuff is addicting.

The Division (both games)

I was curious about the story concept for the first game but didn't like the idea of a modern shooter with bullet spongy enemies so I avoided it for a good few years before giving it a shot. When I did jump in however, my initial hesitation evaporated pretty quickly as the atmosphere of winter New York grabbed me 100%. There are still times where enemy tankiness or firepower can be annoying but that's mostly end game issues and something I can deal with if I lock in.

I probably have more playtime in the second game by this point but I still think there are some things the first game did way better than the sequel (writing, atmosphere, enemy factions, some skills, cosmetics). It's why I tend to alternate between the two whenever I'm in the mood for more TD.

Girls' Frontline

Came for girls with guns, stayed for the story. It's a gacha game, which I know many people might scoff at, but it's from the time when the monetisation practices and tactics where very different to the current landscape (there's no premium pulls, paid weapons or anything like that, the only thing you'd really spend your money would be skins - if you want).

Gameplay is pretty simple (build your squads, traverse node based stages, partake in semi-autobattler combat and complete objectives) but it's pretty enjoyable for the most part. It also does a great job of combining stage challenges/difficulty with what's happening in the story (something its sequel is simply unable to do due to a modern, dupe based character gacha and progression).

We're two weeks from the final main story event of the game, which after more than 7 years of playing feels somewhat bittersweet. It was a fun journey though.

Gothic 2

Played it multiple times, never finished it - usually because I got distracted or just had my fill of fun.
I actually like the Gothic series more than any of the Elder Scrolls titles. These games feel somewhat more alive and immersive to me, to the point that even the unusual control scheme, preset protagonist (I really like making my own characters) or lack of "forever fun" aren't enough to make me lean the other way. There's some "magic" in Gothic that's missing from TES games for me, even if they're great in their own right.

I finally managed to finish the first game a few months ago so I hope I'll do the same with this one "soon". I'd like to scratch it off of my backlog, if only to give myself some closure in that regards.

Skyrim

I don't really like Skyrim. I find it to be pretty shallow and boring in its vanilla state and the only reason I spent as much time on it as I did is mods. I pretty much use all Elder Scrolls and (modern) Fallout games as a base for a modern life-sim experiences where I just do whatever I feel like at the time - anything except for being the hero. So yeah, it's just a backdrop but I guess it counts.

I wish Cyberpunk 2077 had as big modding scene as Skyrim. It's another title I like to use for my "be whoever, forget the story" playthroughs and one I vastly prefer in pretty much every aspect.

Team Fortress 2

I haven't touched it in years but it's still one of my most played multiplayer titles ever (or at least it feels like it). I tried going back to it a few times over the years but modern TF2 is simply not the same. I also really don't care for PvP these days so while I was curious about the classic mod/rework released some time back, I never even gave it a shot. I think I had my fill of competition.

There are probably a few more titles with similar play times but I don't want to make it look like I had no life as a kid (I didn't). I love games man.

Borderlands 2, 1200+ hrs. Only game I was comfortable playing multiplayer without getting anxious and the 14 steam friends I have over the years are all BL2 players.

Elite: Dangerous

You can sink a ludicrous amount of time traversing a 1:1 scale galaxy even with FTL.

World of Warcraft, split between a vanilla private server and official Classic. I have a character on each with over 150 days of playtime (although significant chunks of that are leaving the game open while doing other things, and also programming addons while otherwise afk at the bank).

Not me but a friend of mine has 10+ IN GAME YEARS in Everquest. Apparently he has been playing with his dad since he was 4 or 5 lmfao. I don't understand it but I respect it.

I think my highest is still Kerbal Space Program by a country mile, and that's only what Steam itself counted and doesn't count the at least similar number of hours I likely spent in pre-release versions back when I was first downloading it directly from the devs with no Steam version in sight. So the real numbers are probably somewhere in the 4 to 5 thousand hours range. Dwarf Fortress is probably pretty far up there too but like KSP those hours mostly aren't recorded anywhere. Factorio, Avorion, Starbound, and Terraria are also shockingly high, into the thousands, and a bunch of others like Stardew Valley, Sims 3, X3TC, X4, Empyrion, and Stellaris are knocking on the door of the thousands too. But nothing comes close to KSP for me.

There's also a few I'm surprised are not higher up: Subnautica, Satisfactory, Oxygen Not Included, The Long Dark, ARK Survival Evolved, Rimworld, Astroneer, Slay The Spire are all games that I feel like I've played an absolute ton of, which spend a lot of time living rent-free in my head, but the numbers don't actually show that I've played them that much, low hundreds of hours at most, some only in the high tens. No reason to believe that Steam's numbers aren't accurate here, so I can only conclude that those games are somehow denser and provide similar gameplay value in a shorter play session with less time investment, because yeah my brain has devoted a lot of pathways to some of those.

According to steam, Factorio.

Non-steam games would probably be Dwarf Fortress, but i have no idea how many 100s of hours I have in it

I wish I had a total hours count for all the combined Pokemon games; I got Pokemon Blue when I was in middle school and spent just an unfathomable number of hours in it. I'm not sure if that, plus all the time I spent later in Gold, Sapphire, HeartGold, Black, Black 2, screwing around with romhacks, comes to more than my highest known amount of time logged in a video game, which is around 2,600 hours in Dota 2.

Approaching my first 1000 in Elite:Dangerous. Got myself a Fleet Carrier and a Squadron and I feel like I’ve just started the mid-game. It’s a seemingly endless game world.

Factorio and RimWorld are actually within 4 hours of each other right now, at just over 900 hours each.

Guilty Gear Strive? I remember playing a lot of skyrim too. Anything past 2k hours kinda gets lumped together

Final Fantasy XI. I actively played from April 2004 to November 2011, and casually from around 2019 to 2021. My playtime in game says something like 500ish days, although that would include time I was logged in but not actively playing, but honestly that wouldn't account for much time, so it's still a fairly accurate representation.

Rocket League and Minecraft would probably be the next closest games, I think each somewhere in the neighborhood of 2000-3000 hours.

Probably spent waay too much in Starcraft, Homm3 and AoE2 over the years, but recorded by steam time tracker Elite: Dangerous has been top and it's not even close, with about 5000h. Fml.

Well and truly over 10K hours in World of Warcraft, and I last played until midway through Shadowlands.

But I was also playing it pretty consistently since the two week open beta before it first launched - so yeah.

No way to really check but I'm pretty sure it's Minecraft. Played it since the very first public build, it's been less and less each year the past few years but it has to be over 5000 hours total. Got over 2000 hours in Warframe, Destiny 2, Rocket League and over 1000 hours in No Man's Sky, Terraria, Starbound, Halo 1, 2, 3 and Reach. There's surely one or two games more that I'm not remembering ATM and over 500 hours in many, many others.

Yes, I play games a lot, and a lot of games.

1. Guild Wars 2 with 5,004 hours since 2015 :)
2. Guild Wars 1 with 2,507 hours since 2018 (yes, I started it after sequel; also spent a few weeks afk farming, so probably a few hundred hours less)
3. Genshin with 2,248 hours since 2021

Dead Cells, with 1300hrs total (I have hit a wall at 3BC I haven't been able to pass, but it's still fun), and Grim Dawn with 1600hrs (but including non-official content like the user-run seasons). Current runner-ups are Sulfur and Witchfire with around 250hrs both.

Squad is by far the most with about 3.5k hours. I dont really like playing other games online nowadays but Squad really hits the sweet spot of 80% social 20% gameplay.

The rest of the list is probably Megadrive, N64 and Dreamcast stuff :D

Factorio! 2k hours :)

More than 800 in Dark Souls 1

Somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 hours of EQ2 since 2008, across all the characters i made there.

😐

My top game is Tabletop Simulator with 365.1 hours. Kinda surprised. But I've been playing boardgames online with my mates weekly since I moved abroad some years ago.

Some really good games have official versions for Tabletop Sim, it's an excellent way to play.

Arma 3 with custom mods. 3500hrs... In my defence we were playing in a fairly big clan in team based pvp

Number is pretty low in comparison to most comments on here, but I have 380 hours in FTL, so there's that lol.

World of Warcraft with over 11k hours. Guild wars 2 is probably 2nd with over 6k. The highest on Steam is Warframe with 2329.

For WoW and GW2, it's basically the same reason. I loved MMO games and the huge world you can explore. I found guilds in both that I vibed with, and still talk with some of those folks today.

For Warframe, the gameplay is top notch IMO. I didn't mind the grind (I was a MMO player, after all) and the selection of warframes and loadouts kept things from getting too stale. I mainly played with one of my friends I met through WoW, and we roped some friends into playing with us from time to time.

I still get the itch from time to time to get into a new MMO to try and relive the experiences I had from previous games, but those days are most likely behind me.

Probably Warframe, followed by rimworld. i say probably, because I pirated rimworld because its so expensive with all the expansions, heh. Only got 200 hours logged on steam.

Actually, WoW might be #1 because I played it since I was a kid, theres no hour counter though so I have no idea. Haven't touched it since the blitzchung era tho, and its really hard to even guess

I have over 5000 hours on Skyrim, even though I've never finished the main story.

World of Warcraft. Only played for a year back in 2010 but racked up an entire month of time played on my main, not even counting my half dozen alts.

Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020) - over 1000 hours logged in flight, countless hours spent learning and researching avionics, checklists, airliners, procedures, hardware, software addons, etc.

I have 4000 hours in Wurm Unlimted as tracked by steam. A fantastically wonderful game, that was sadly abandoned by developers, and even more sadly doesnt seem you can find a stable server for anymore because the servers are either weird, scummy places, or eventually implode due to weird admin dramas.

I have two other 1000+ hour games as officially tracked by steam, that i wont mention because i need to pretend it didnt happen for my own sanity, lol.

beyond this are older games that I know I have more time in, but steam was really buggy at the time about tracking played time... like TF2, which I'm sure is my actually most played game, because you can't play that game 5 hours a night, almost every night, for 5+ years, and only have 700 hours played. My real played time is probably in the 5 digits.

Arma 2 (for original DayZ mod/DayZero/Epoch) is probably up there in the 5 digit range too, if steam tracked time properly.

Stellaris.

Probably World of Warcraft unfortunately. That was a long time ago though.

Lineage 2 when I was a teenager. Roughly 12000 hours.

Trackable? Terraria at just over 1,350 hours plus another 147 in tmodloader since it moved to steam 7 Days to Die at 711 Binding of Isaac at 572

Untrackable? Probably Breath of Fire 2, Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, or maybe Secret of Mana I play a randomizer of one of them almost every night before I go to bed or when I'm bored.

I don't think I'll ever top World of Warcraft when I was a teenager with infinite free time

Elite Dangerous at about 1300 hours. I do wonder if anything from the ps2 days beats that, with more time and fewer games, but I doubt it. Been playing for 6 years

WoW is definitely at the top and it will be hard to unseat it even though I don't really play anymore. After that It's likely between Minecraft, Eve Online, or World of Tanks - I don't actually know. The next one I know a number for is Baldur's Gate 3 at over 1400 hours, so that's 5th. I have no idea what order 2, 3, and 4 are though, lol.

Destiny 1 and 2. Next would be kingdom hearts 2. Over 400 hours getting to level 99.

Rimworld

For me it's Minecraft and Space Engineer (1,600 hrs). Maybe 1/4 of the time it's AFK while machines are gathering the work.

The only game I have played enough to rack up a lot of hours is World of Warcraft. I started a few months after launch (after seriously trash talking it and preferring EQ2) and I still play off and on. I really dig the old history stuff in the books like The War of the Ancients trilogy and Lord of the Clans. I don’t really raid or join groups for stuff, I’m a “filthy casual” that chases pets, transmogs, mounts, achievements, and that sort of thing. I play one of the worlds largest MMORPGs in solo mode lol

After that, maybe The Witcher Adventure game on Steam because it’s fun. Or Halo Reach back in the day when I played firefight doubles with a buddy of mine.

My answer will likely always be World of Warcraft. I played in my 20s and I played a lot. At some point when I typed /played, the number I got back exceed 1 year of in game time. I vowed never to look again out of shame. I this day I do not know what my total play time is.

TF2, 1,9k + 500 (old account) = 2,4k hours

Brawlhalla, 1,5k hours

I never hit even 100 hours in any game until I started elite dangerous. I'm almost at 1000 hours now. It's so dam good

Endless Space 2. 488 hours. It's my comfort game. I wait long enough to forget how to play it, then I play it again.

Easily Kerbal Space Program. I gotta start posting some of my stuff. Got real into SSTOs after a couple thousand hours, now I have a damn fleet of the things. My latest achievement is an SSTO with both a full suite of scientific equipment (including Breaking Ground deployables) and ISRU, and with enough dV to make it almost everywhere in the kerbolar system, refueling and collecting science along the way.

My current goal is to send recovery crafts to bring every space probe back to Kerbin intact. These are dinky little disposable landers thay were meant to transmit science and then be deleted, but now I wanna play an interplanetary crane game and get them back. Clean up my tracking station without destroying any existing crafts.

The Binding Of Isaac, around 1700 or something

The many iterations of Counter-Strike.

According to Steam, it's Skyrim at 788 hours, followed by Crusader Kings II at 615 hours, followed by Skyrim at 522 hours.

Honestly though it's probably Pokémon FireRed, my first ever save was over 500 hours when I eventually reset it, and that's not counting all the hours on an emulator

In my lifetime?

Probably Doom.

Diablo 2. No idea how many hours, easily over 3k for sure.

No other game I played come close to this amount, closest is probably 600 or 700 hours. I got so many 50-400 hours games.

EVE Online and Valheim.

Factorio. 1600 hours. I admit that is a rookie number.

Islands of Myth.

What got me hooked is really the essence of the game itself. A multiplayer fantasy RPG with a global player base. It's a really cool concept that I've enjoyed in many iterations. EQ, WoW, GW2 etc.

I just never really stopped playing this one. One of the things I love about MUDs is that it's so easy to just have it running in another window. Killing a monster every 4 minutes during the work day. Chatting with folks and organizing groups while literally playing other MMOs.

I don't think that I could play WoW on one screen and GW2 on another with any efficacy and I almost certainly wouldn't enjoy it.

I've also really enjoyed the classes the game offers, the ability to multi class, and the reincarnation system which is similar to modern "prestige" systems. Except I can keep most of my earned exp while choosing an entirely different race and class combination.

MUD communities tend to be pretty great and this one has been no exception.

In regards to the screenshot "Mud age" is the same thing as /played or /age in MMOs. The amount of time spent logged in to the game.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2.

I replay them both multiple times a year and make sure I get as close to 100% each time.

I wish The Old Republic would've failed as a subscription because I whole heartedly believe it's the sole reason we'll never get a KotOR 3.

I can say with certainly that the game I have played the longest is Warcraft III.

Now the most hours played… phew.. hard to say. It is either Warcraft III or World of Warcraft.

I'm sure when I last checked GTA5 on PS4 was sitting at around 1500 hours.

MW2 back on 360 was sitting at around 35 days according to the multiplayer leaderboards.

It probably shouldn't count due to the nature of the "game," but World of Warcraft will never be surpassed by another game for me in terms of sheer hours "played." I put those two words in quotes because at some point the game became a job, and the hours played were almost like work or social time talking to friends. I haven't had an active account or played since 2020, so I can't check my hours; but I would estimate I had 200 days played on my main, 150 days on my primary alt, 50 days on my secondary alt... roughly 9600 hours total??

Outside of WoW, my next highest is probably a close tie between COD MW2, Counterstrike, Elden Ring, Ghosts of Tsushima, Oblivion, BG3, DOS2, and Skyrim. I can only focus on one game at a time, so I'll pick a game and play it exclusively for 6 months to a year.

Either Minecraft or Animal Crossing. Both are far beyond 2000 hours, but I don't know which is ahead.

While not in 1000+ hours like others, but I have 700± hours in both Terraria and factorio.

Probably Assetto Corsa. VR sim rig + Covid. It was just the best.

This old Korean MMO called Nexus TK. I think it was Nexon's first game (Arc Raiders). Picked it up in like... 1997? I played it very heavily for a few years on and off. When I say heavily I mean like 4-5 hours a day. It got bad at some points. Got off of it at times but always went back. I still pop on every now and then just to say hi to the hundred or so people who still play.

Elder Scrolls Online, for me.

Definitely The Binding of Isaac Rebirth. ~800 hours.

I'd have to check, and for the older ones I can't, but either something from Bethesda before they forgot how to make games (probably Morrowind, possibly Skyrim or New Vegas) or something from Paradox (either Crusader Kings 2 and 3 or Stellaris), followed by Cyberpunk 2077 (can't keep me away from Night City for long) or something else by either of the first ones. Or Excel; wasted a few thousand hours on that one too.

halo 3, rainbow 6 siege, battlefield bad company 2 and battlefield 3, 4

Steam says PUBG at 1280 hours... I don't know how it hasn't been surpassed yet. Cross-platform I know Halo MCC comes close.

Minecraft would beat them both if I had stats on it though, so many modpack replays.

I’m not proud of it but most likely League of Legends. It was pretty much the only game I played along with csgo in 2016 when I was a teenager. Dark times. I don’t know how many hours I have in League but in csgo I have 216h which compared to some people here isn’t that much lol.

Most likely League of Legends.

Distant 2nd is Path of Exile with ~5k hours.

Minecraft is probably also in that ballpark.

Terraria with 1k hours.

Stardew valley with 700 hours.

I also played a ton of Maplestory back in the day but have no idea or way to estimate how much.

its an unofficial number but rock band 3 i used to play every day, 5-8 hours a day. for around 3 years

Probably Ultima Online if I had a way of checking.

I used to play that game all day, every day I wasn't in school from 1997 to about 2004. I even still play it on occasion, just not on EA's servers.

Based on what Steam has recorded, ARMA 3. But I know for a fact that many hundreds of hours in that was just the game running in the background on the map editor while I typed up scripts in notepad++. TF2 is the next highest one, and that game was like UO again for me from 2007 to 2014.

I seem to get obsessed for 7 years and then just drop things.

Excluding MMOs, Captain of Industry. Otherwise WoW, of course.

Official? 4000 hours in Left 4 Dead 2.

Unofficial? Easily over 10,000 hours in Sven-Coop (a multiplayer Half-Life 1 mod).

I started playing Sven-Coop when it was released in 1999. I play at least a little almost every day I'm not out of town. I moderate some servers. I show new players how to beat hard levels. People still make new levels. Sven-Coop wasn't added to Steam until 2016, so the hours weren't tracked until then. Since 2016 I've racked up around 4000 hours. Factor in the 16-17 years of gameplay that wasn't tracked and I easily have over 10,000 hours.

I'm not sure I'd want to know the exact hours even if I could.

Civilization V, especially considering it might often stay open all weekend on the second monitor. Also saw Eve Online mentioned; that took untold amounts of my life, but I've been clean for a long time o/. Arma 3 with it's various mods also has well over a thousand, what with it's endless modular gameplay and annoying ass realism (hiking sim). But right now at this very moment I've got X4 going on a few hundie. I've heard it called Eve Offline; I dunno if it's exactly that, but it can be incredibly frustrating and clunky, but also crack cocaine. I think I've just barely figured out how to play it.

The Outlast Trials.

Right around 400 hours

Bloons 6 :)

League of Legends, and nothing comes close to my time spent on it

Doom 2. Played since it first came out and played tons of mods

It's either Genshin Impact or Animal Crossing New Horizons (it's Genshin Impact by like 1000h more lol)

Probably Civ 3. I've been playing off and on for over 20 years. I've played hundreds of hours of several other games, but civ 3 has to be the peak

1800 hours and counting on Path of Exile. With how major game updates are scheduled, either I'm sitting it out for months or it's all I play, depending on if the expansion interests me. This pattern has been going on since I joined the open beta in 2013.

The large variety of builds, extremely vast endgame, and very high power ceiling means that there's always more stuff to play and more improvements you can make.

I have 5133 hours in Transformice. It was pretty much the perfect game for me at one time.

It may look like a silly nothing game, but the skill ceiling is almost non-existent. I felt like I was improving for every single hour I put in. Made a lot of international friends, too.

For me it was when i was in high school, the space autism got me and i played something like 4000 combined hours in space engineers.

I don't even like that game.

Most hours were probably EverQuest up to planes, counterstrike around 1.5-1.6, and TF2. I've had 200-300 hours in a few other games & series (elder scrolls series, dark souls series, final fantasies, etc) but those would all be well over 500. The first two were as much the community guild/clan as the game, the last was just a time in life where I was able to spend a lot of time on games.

Destiny 2. sigh. Before that it was Grim Dawn. Probably going back to that.

All in all probably Overwatch. It recently overtook HoI4 in most hours in my Steam library.

Depends how we're counting. Actively playing is probably WoW, but I have so many hours in Factorio, as i would just leave it running overnight. Had a server up for friends also, so probably have close to 1k hours of the game being open, but definitely feel like i wasn't actively playing as much as WoW. Just to how many years i put into playing WoW.

I haven't played in a long time but EU4. I had thousands of hours of playtime after about ten years.

Terraria

1055 hours!

Spelunky*

I have spent around 2000 hours in Gmod. A sizable percentage of those hours involved trolling the people who play TTT. Escapades involve kicking off a detective civil war, provoking people into offing half the server, and spamming admin messages and false reports. The gamemode has fallen out of favor these days, so I only really check out interesting Gmod maps and nextbots now.

[Uploading image...]

Civilization VI with the right mods is insane. Just a shame the multiplayer is so ridden with desync, and the newer ones suck.

KSP, for sure.

Steam says, out of those I have in my library there, Rocket League. But it's relatively closely followed by GTA 5, which I've also played on a console (those hours wouldn't be counted there), so I suspect that that's the real answer overall. GTA 5 is just a wonderfully deep game with an entertaining story where you can almost never run out of things to explore.

It's possible that Pokémon FireRed or Emerald has even more, that was too long ago for me to know for sure.

Battlefield on PlayStation, hands down

Played 2, 3, 4, 1 (don't ask, I didn't make the numbering) and 5 to death on a wide variety of play Station models. Would log some average of 10 hours per week, every week, for since BF2 started and BF5 ended

Elite Dangerous. Instead of paying attention to my uni classes I was hauling freight to Robigo and slamming people with a hull-maxxed federal dropship.

Put a lot of hours into Paradox Interactive games

Minecraft, played since beta 1.5 (sometime like 2011 or 2012 ish). I probably have 3k or 4k hours in it

Terraria, cant calculate entirely because kid me pirated the early versions but I'd guess 2k or so between vanilla and modded

League as well unfortunately. Met some cool people from it through my 3k or so hours

The only other game above 1k is TF2

Guild Wars 2 with 9405 hours as of just now. Non-predatory MMO with fun moment-to-moment gameplay

The most that I can prove is Europa Universalis 4, just north of 1100 hours on Steam. However, I strongly suspect my playtime in Guitar Hero 3 from high school likely exceeds that. Runescape might be another contender, but that was so long ago at this point that I don't really have a good idea of how much play time I actually put into it.

GTA Online is my most-played game according to Steam, but that time is largely skewed from how rough the game was upon its original launch. Rather than put up with nearly hour-long loading times whenever I wanted to play, I used to simply leave the game running overnight. And as a result, I've got a few thousand hours in that game.

Project Zomboid is a distant second according to playtime, currently around 900 hours, but I think I'm catching up to it in terms of time I've spent actually playing the game.

Something about sandboxes with cars and guns that just scratches a certain itch for me.

I've also got at least a few hundred hours on iRacing, but because I haven't linked that to my Steam account, I don't know the exact amount of time. And I'm not going to look back through my race history to add up every minute of virtual track time.

Not sure which game individually, but I have about 9600 hrs in SteamVR

My top nine, according to steam

Most are so high because I lucked into finding a group of players I could really hang with.

Dota 2 is the most I have logged at around 3000 hours, but I don't have any friends to play with and don't want to deal with randoms, so almost all of it is against bots. Even though the bots are garbage, there's still so many creative, silly ways to play that game and ridiculous builds that are fun to try and see if they work.

Super Smash Brothers (64 and melee) is probably the most of all time though. Any time I pick up a new 2D game, I find myself comparing it to SSB in terms of mechanics. The way you control your characters in that series is the most innovative and compelling concept I have ever seen in a game. If I ever have the time to make a game myself, I would probably heavily model it based on that control scheme.

I also have to give a shoutout to Streets of Rogue, which is a fairly obscure rogue-like that deserves a lot more attention IMO. Another very replayable game with many fascinating play styles and ways to complete missions. It's on Steam and it's fantastic, I would highly recommend it.

Enter the Gungeon is another game I have high playtime on. It took about 40 hours before it started becoming fun, but man, it's awesome once you finally figure out how to properly dodge enemies and make the most of your weapons and items.

GTA 5 (online)
Both editions on PC amount to 2300 hours

Outside of that:
Mario Kart 7 on my 3DS
Mario Kart DS

I'm with you in Runescape. By far my most played game since coming back to osrs in 2018.

I keep taking breaks, but always come back. Many periods I've played more than my full time job, and I still haven't done nearly everything.

Most definitely continuum/subspace. It's been a long time, but I think the last time I checked it was around 16k hours. That said, it had a chat client that you usually left open in the background. So how much of that is actual play time I don't know.

I don't have that much free time to play as an adult anymore and steam is only tracking game time from adulthood.

Mostly a mix of ARGPs and industry games, because the mechanic is engaging, simple and repetitive. I generally avoid story based games as by the time i can play again, I've forgotten what the details of the story we're about. I need the "in last episode" for story based games.

Top3.

POE 891h. It's a really good ARPG game. Satisfactory 538h, industry part. WH 40k Inquisitor(combined) 532h, Warhammer themed ARPG.

Fallout New Vegas at 200 hours

I don't have a log of hours --- I don't play it on Steam --- but I'd be pretty confident that it'll be Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataclysm:_Dark_Days_Ahead

Probably Animal Crossing New Horizons with like 450hrs

I get bored so quickly of games, I don’t understand how some people manage to put several hundreds of hours in most games they play

I'm not sure which one I have more hours in, but it's either Mechwarrior Online or the Mass Effect trilogy.

Well, according to Steam, the answer is a tool that used to be available to adjust GPU fan speed. At the time I had a video card that wasn't letting the OS adjust that, or maybe I didn't have the right driver, I don't really recall enough details to retroactively troubleshoot it.

But if I didn't use that even the least demanding game would very swiftly overwhelm the card because it didn't have any heat mitigation, so any time I played any game I would also open this tool and crank the fans to max so I didn't have to pay attention to them (I had headphones). It also wasn't that uncommon for me to forget to close it since it ran in the background once configured. In fact, it looks like I have even more hours in that than I do in EVE Online.

Probably Path of Exile 1, but fortunately I got it direct from GGGs website so it didnt track hours.

Try out POE 2 when it goes free to play!

Probably WoW or LoL, but I'm not going to login to either to check because I switched to Linux and have been boycotting blizzard for over a decade.

Either Quake or DayZ... Possibly TF2...

I think the game with the highest playtime for me is Final Fantasy XIV with around 1,2k hours. That's only Steam though, I'm sure Minecraft is way, way higher than that.

There's no way for me to time it out because I got it before Steam existed, but it has to be in the thousands of hours range. SimCity 4. I got the Deluxe Edition just after the Rush Hour expansion came out. Played it everyday for hours on end from then to college. Just over 12 years time. I didn't stop until Cities Skylines 1 came out. I put 500 hours into that then dropped off because it's just not the same.

It's the one game that nobody has ever truly replicated. There's attempts and successors out there, but none of them hit like SC4 did. The aesthetics, modding community, music, all make that game so fresh yet nostalgic. It really had everything you could want from a modern City Building game. It was so much more than a city painter too. The advisors, policies, taxation, abandoned buildings, all of it conveyed a living city way beyond imaginable. Every attempt of a modern city builder game is missing the soul that SC4 had.

Destiny and Destiny 2, although Binding of Isaac is a distant 2nd (or 3rd).

Steam has Train Valley 2 as my most hours by far (3544). But a lot of those hours are from minimizing the game, and leaving it running overnight, so probably closer to 2000 hours.

This is mostly due to the Steam Workshop / community maps, as there are hundreds of them and new ones get added constantly, so it's a great game that I can play quick sessions while watching something on TV at night, or eating lunch at my desk.

Red Dead 2 has 2400+, but 2200 of that is on Xbox, and it's the main thing I play on Xbox, so I'm not sure if that's actual gameplay time, or just "game running but just sitting at the main menu" time (which would be a lot of hours).

Oxygen Not Included is over 600 hours, and I haven't even added any DLC, so I see that getting a bunch more hours when I have time.

No idea. Homm2. Homm3. Disciples 2. Age of Empires. Age of Mythology. Warcraft2/3. Mu online. WoW. Counter-Strike. Rift. Warframe. Neverwinter. Star Trek Online. Apex Legends.

I played them a lot. At least 1k hours each across the years. Why? Some were fun, some were what my friends played and some were addictive.
A game sometimes clicks, not always for the right reasons.

I don't do multiplayer games, so Elden Ring I think is at the top for me at around 200 hours. Although, if you looked on Playstation it would probably be one of the Spider-Man games because my kids use my account to just play them as a sandbox.

As huge of a gamer as I am (or was?) I am sad to say I never expected this in a million years, but its by far Fall Guys... been playing it since its 2020 release basically every day or every other day since with maybe only a few weeks missed when times were busy. The appeal? It's super simple, fun, and a great game to play with friends. At the beginning we had like 12 people playing this for a solid year. Fell to about 8 people on and off for the next few years, and the last few years I still got about 5 people who play. On average we will have 3 of us per night playing for an hour to 2 hours. It's not even fully about the game, it's an excuse to relax and talk to friends which is easier to do with a game that doesnt require strategy or communication. Either way my end of year highlights show its been my #1 played game every year with about 400 to 500 hours a year just in that game. We have tried to find something new, but it's just never the same.

New Vegas is around 470 for me. FO4 is a close second at 460. But I probably spent way, way more time in Battlezone 2, possibly MechWarrior 3 as well. Maybe Rollercoaster Tycoon. Those were in my peak gaming era.

Measured, it would be CoD MW2 (the original) with over 30 days, played across 2 years

Unmeasured, easily Championship Manager (later changed to Football Manager). In one year I'd over 40 days but I was still in school back then. If I added up all the years together it would be an unbelievable number. I played it pretty much daily from about 1997 until 2004. Then picked up Football Manager from around 2005 until 2008 (I stopped as online FPS took over)

Latest version I have played is FM2022 but barely played the more recent ones in comparison to the older versions. I still play the old one from time to time, thanks to Nicks Patcher

DayZ 2750 hours. I'm still rubbish.

Black Desert Online unfortunately, I have over 5k active hours and was truly addicted during a bad time in my life. After that Kerbal Space Program which I have far fewer regrets over, probably my favourite game of all time, I’m still mad about ksp2

My top two are Dota 2 (1520h) and CS 2 (800h), but since I have quit competitive games, I'll mention the third place: I have 598 hours on Fallout 4.

Minecraft, Fallout 4, Skyrim, probably Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2 in my younger years

3k+ hours in d2 before ps5 dropped only added maybe 100 hours before bungie made me hang it up

Multiple 999:99 timers in pokemon since red and blue

Probably League of Legends or Minecraft. Most played with hours tracked is Counter-Strike

Thousand of hours in Clan Lord. It got me through some rough teenage years.

I have maybe more hours in WoW, but I cannot see my playtime without installing it again.

Morrowind, Skyrim, Minecraft and Final Fantasy Tactics (different modded PS1 Versions mostly) must be the games with the most hours for me. I must have 1000+ hours in each of those, well maybe only 600ish in Tactics.

I have over 1000 hours in Skyrim, but thats also over steam, PS4, and switch. Still haven’t finished the game but I've got like 6 different characters lol. I just hit 109 hours in BG3 last night, stuck on the couch with a bum leg helped with that! I only just started act 2 last night as well. AC Valhalla/origins/odyssey probably has close to 500 hours, with witcher 3 getting up there too. Not sure on those though since they're on PS4. Valhalla is the only game I've actually finished, ever.

I like to wander and do the side quests, see every bit of the map, sort and sell my stuff. I don’t play a lot so when i do get to sit down and play I like to immerse myself in the setting.

If Minecraft counted playtime, over 1000 hours. Otherwise, Stardew Valley at about 500 hours.

Dont have the information to hand, but Rappelz (f2p MMO that may or may not still exist), Halo (if a whole series counts) and Slay the Spire are all contenders for the top spot.

I would think probably Diablo 2 over the course of my childhood, although it's hard to tell. It might be EVE Online, I was very much into that for a few years between 2010-2015 or so. And it's not exactly a game you play casually, or at least I didn't. Over the last decade it's probably been Football Manager. 17 is the iteration I have the most hours in but I probably have a thousand hours combined across multiple editions across the last ten years.

EDIT: I actually managed to exorcise Dota from my memory, probably because of all the accumulated misery it has accrued. Yeah, that's the one. Easily the most hours combined over Dota 1&2.

mmmm. I mean that would be tough. When I was doing mmo's I would be logging in in the morning and evening doing event grinds plus taking time to play more extensively and I did that for years. I take forever to play games though so I put in plenty with cyberpunk and elden ring and final fantasy and baldurs gate. oh and that harry potter. You know though it has to be the mmos because again that was like years and really it was a rare day I did not at least log in to touch base on some sort of grind thing. So either champions online or star trek online.

It's either Elite Dangerous or Warframe.

*checks* uhhhh... Elite Dangerous.

1935 hours, and we played a while outside of Steam running the launcher directly, so let's call it 2000 hours. Elite itself also tracks hours played (in a weird "weeks/days/hours" format for some reason), but we'd have to actually open it and log in and everything to find out.

-- Frost

God of war

Super Mecha Champions, when the servers were still online. Such a fun game, genuinely fun gameplay.

Second place is either Stellaris, Helldivers 2, or Halo CE.

Probably LoL or Rocket League. LoL keeps getting worse tho barely any play time recently. GunZ the duel had a lot of playtime back in the day and came back recently in my heart. fgunz.net

Maplestory, even though I haven't played it in a decade or so.

More recently, it would be Anno 1800.

Definitely one of the Guitar Heros

WoW, it'll never be close.

But more recently, Rimworld, Deep Rock Galactic, Golf With Your Friends, Sea of Thieves, the Witcher.

I've put in 100s of hours on RDR2 and Elden Ring, but my newest game would probably be Ball X Pitt

I only have the numbers for games from Steam, so my actual longest played game is probably the old version of Dwarf Fortress. I also typically don't have the attention span to keep playing a single game for hundreds of hours so the longest I see in my Steam library is just under 200 hours. Aether Way would actually be higher in the list because I played an earlier version of it before it came to Steam.

Probably FIFA but I haven't played in years.

Legend of Zelda - Breath of the Wild.

Definitely Skyrim, across multiple editions and platforms. And I’m proud to say I never sank into the stealth-archer habit. Armored mage FTW muthafucka!

Monster Hunter, easily. I've been playing since Dos.

It's WoW. I don't even want to know how much WoW I've played.

It could be WoW, it could be LoL it could be Genshin Impact. The only one that's tracked it ~1050hrs in Warframe but I really doubt its beating any of the above three.

I don't get much screen time - work and other hobbies - but I've somehow got over 300 hours in cyberpunk. Also, I'm fairly new to it at the mo, but I could see myself putting a lot of hours into mewgenics.

runescape more than i like to admit. before the eoc/falador protest i played sparingly, because of school. then around 2018, i started playing during an event then found i could make more gp by selling form the shops to ge, which help funded bonds, and i did it for severalyears til i got burnt out from rs, and i only play it sparingly. i am a casual bosser, im not good at fighting the harder ones with too much complexity/movements.

i know people dint like TH/mtx, they couldve just got rid of the xp lamps/stars that were causing the problems. rs threw a fit and removed everything like minor daillyscapes.

4k hours on Geometry Dash. It's very addicting to play and or beat the community's hardest levels.

SimTower. I have spent too much time there

Probably WoW or LoL. I don't play either of those anymore and probably never will again, but I doubt any game I play would ever come close again.

According to Steam:

1. Modern Warfare 2 OG, not remaster - 411
2. Dragon Age Origins - 245. Makes sense considering how many times I restarted lol
3. Baldur’s Gate III - 215. Pretty sure that's mostly one playthrough.
4. Trails of Cold Steel III - 178. Holy fuck is this game long! I'm only just now in the finale.
5. Slay the Spire - 169. That's way off though for sure. I have it on Steam, mobile, and Switch.
6. Elden Ring - 153
7. Persona 5 Royal - 136. I was not prepared for how long this game is.
8. Divinity Original Sin - 127. I restarted a lot.
9. Path of Exile - 116
10. And of course, Skyrim. 105, but I've never actually finished it even once.

Well the top contender for me is FFXI by a mile. But naming an MMO in a thread like this almost feels like cheating.

My next game after that would be Hades 1 with 421 hours.

Slay the Spire without doubt 2.5k on steam plus some switch and mobile.

If you group the Trackmania games those do come close, and maybe Minecraft but I have barely touched that game in the last decade and no way to check hours from back then.

Probably still MW2 2011 I think I had a total of 50d playtime across both of my accounts lol.