I discovered today that my most played game on Steam is Astronner with about 500 hours, and my second most played is Surviving Mars with about 500 hours.
Almost certainly World of Warcraft. I don't think I even liked it for most of the time I spent playing it. I've been annoyed about the overall direction since basically Cataclysm, and IMO Burning Crusade laid the foundations for most of my major complaints, although I didn't realize it at the time. I have decided that I'm opposed to the "expansions add a new tier of everything that invalidates old content" model of expanding games. If creating diverse content that is still enjoyable at level 60 is too hard, then maybe games just don't need to be expanded indefinitely past their original level caps.
Mine should be Monster Hunter with roughly 2-3 k hours across the series. But single-game most played hours should be Final Fantasy XIV with a little more than 1.5k hours.
To be honest: Im not proud of any of this. Most of the time was accumulated when I was much younger and I wish I would've had the courage to engage in meaningful encounters with other people instead. Gaming used to be my main escape mechanism, which helped me get through some rough times, but held my personal progress behind by a good margin. A little playing on the side won't hurt though, nowadays.
For a single game it's Factorio. Steam has me at around 1600 hours.
For a series it's gotta be Civilization. I've been playing since I was in fifth grade. I'd go over to my friend's house when he wasn't home to play Civ I. I'd spend entire weekends in college playing Civ II and III. I had to have my GF hide my Civ V disk so I wouldn't miss deadlines. And now I'm on a full playthrough of all the new civs in the latest DLC.
I guess I can't know for sure, but I'd say it has to be Minecraft. I wish there was a way to see the hours I've spent in the Java Edition of the game. If it's not Minecraft though, my second guess would be Rocket League. When I add up the hours across the platforms I've played on, it comes out on top by a small margin.
I played A LOT of World of Warcraft in college and after graduation 15 years ago, I'm a little ashamed to say I put about 2,450 hours into it, but havent played in 5 years. The next is Witcher 3 with 270 hours, No Man's Sky 240 hours and Borderlands 2 with 225 hours.
Off of what I have record of - Stardew Valley. 387 hours on Steam, just over 200 hours on my Switch, and my current file on my phone is at 87 hours - not including previous files that I do not have anymore.
That being said, there are games that I bet would be up there as well but they don't record time so I have no way of knowing.
Minecraft, which has over 200 hours on my Switch alone despite most of my play time being on PC or my phone.
Starcraft: Brood War
Super Smash Bro. Melee. I don't play these two much, anymore, but when I was young and didn't have much else of a life, these took up an incredible amount of my time.
DISSIDIA NT on the PS4, at around the 920 hour mark. Guess it's sound to say that I was dedicated to mastering a couple of favourite characters for ultimately no reason. No one plays online and there were absolutely zero tournaments. SquareEnix eventually stopped supporting it.
I like games I can just pause and walk away from for a bit. Or just play while watching videos. So the hour counts are never really accurate. But I can safely assume in the past few years its Rimworld. It's my game I can play while doing other stuff. But if I crank up the speed it's engaging enough to focus on if I want to.
Lifetime totals it may be Minecraft though, I usually go back to it every few years. The urge comes and goes.
The biggest one I can look at the numbers at id Warframe with about 1,500 hours.
Though I have a lot more than that in League of Legends when you count SR, ARAM and TFT together. I have like 5k Aram Games, which would be probably about 9k-10k Hours on its own.
I should have guessed it would be Hades, but I'm really surprised to see Octopath up there instead of Slime Rancher, which somehow is way down there even though it feels way more fun. Since when has fun made something seem longer?
In general, without question:
• The Sims (played semi-religiously for almost a decade til the file became too big for my crappy laptop to risk adding any more GB to)
• Skyrim again (starting over just isn't the same once you've hit lvl 81, and I am grieving)
• Disgaea (bought 3 separate times because my sibling kept selling it to buy other things, and then a fourth when I got out on my own. Conservatively, I have beaten that game a minimum of 9 times. Would play again.)
I played WoW religiously from vanilla until Legion with very few breaks. I think I had over 3 years in game time on my main when I quit, with a few more years spread between alts.
Next would be Path of Exile, 3000 hours and counting.
Single game would be Skyrim, series would be Pokemon or Harvest Moon. I haven't put a significant amount of time into a game or series in a loooooong time :/
Oblivion. It's been a few years since I sat down and added it all up, but between all of my characters, I had just short of 3000 hours into the game. Nothing else is even close to that.
I have about 4000 hours in CS:GO with most of my time being in community servers. About 1500 hours spent matchmaking, the rest split between surf and KZ.
500 hours is also my sweet spot I think - I don't think I have any games with significantly more than that. Here are the games I have ~500 hours in (that I can remember off the top of my head):
Breath of the Wild
Civ IV
Dark Souls
Monster Hunter World
Skyrim
Warframe
If entire series count though, it's gotta be Civ, by a landslide.
On steam alone, Skyrim. Oldrim at 1500+ hours, SE at 600+ hours. Then theres Skyrim on consoles, played on PS4, xBox, and Switch... probably easily doubles that number.
Fuck. It could be Wario Land or Donkey Kong Country 2 (a bit later, 1996?) for me. Been playing them almost constantly since 1994 along with Mario 1-3. This gets even more fucked when you throw in all the ports, randomizers etc.
For actual hard numbers (roughly), it's Xenoblade for me.
Played once on the Wii when it came out here in the UK in 2011. 107hrs.
Played it again through on the Wii. This was around the same, savefile says 142 hrs.
Played through it on Dolphin. Probably 80hrs or so, I don't have the numbers on this. Throw another 100 hours on.
Played through it to 100% on the New 3DS port, twice. This was probably another 200+ hrs.
Definitive edition. Played through once on the Switch to 100% (this took 97 hrs) then twice again on Yuzu in 4k. 150 hrs so far on Yuzu (just got to Valak Mountain in this current playthrough)
Don't even get me started on X, 2 and 3. but well worth it.
Steam seems to think I've played chasm for 444 hours, but it must have been left on lol. Steam has me at 150-ish on Hitman 2, one of the nba 2ks, Witcher 3, and Elden ring.
Ut99 and after that cs1.6. I have some hundred hours on Fallout 3 and New Vegas. Recent games I think it's no man's sky because I can sneak in some play time and it doesn't require dedication like an online game
How is Surviving Mars? I got it on a steam sale but haven't played it yet. Got deep into Cities Skylines by the same company so thought it was worth a download.
Breath of the wild for me. The switch only counts up to 500 hrs and I know I’m probably double that. 100% the game on master mode with very very little help from guides. I just love that game man. TOTK is great too but my heart is still with BOTW
Conan Exiles - pity tencent monetized it, I had well over 1000 hours and had no intents on quiting until they riddled a 3 year old game with microtransactions.
Ark - Dinosaurs are fun. Nuff said. Mixed feelings on the upcoming news. Remastered and the delays with 2 have me debating different games.
Eco - was a great community game. It's dying out a lot due to the slow update process these last two years. Water updates were something I was hyped for 2 years now, and it still isn't out yet. <.<.
I had close to a thousand hours in Modern Warfare 3 and Black Ops II back in the day, but i was in middle school and gaming was the main way me and my friends hung out outside of school
If minecraft accounts tracked playtime id be at least 1k there over the years if not much more
On steam I have close to 600 in rocket league, havent played it in a while but thats the most played that i can verify
I've sunk a lot of hours into both guild wars 2 & Warframe. over 5000 apiece, iirc. but they're both MMOs, so that's not that unusual.
the standout for me in grim dawn. I'm at over 2500 hours, which seems just a massive amount for a game that's not an MMO or even an open ended, open world game like skyrim or fallout.
Well Steam says I have 10,500 hours in Dota 2, but if I check the total combined time of every match I've played in the past decade+ it's actually only... 4500 hours.
Fuck me that's a lot of time and electricity wasted.
MMOs were always my thing. I'm almost glad I don't know exactly how much time I buried into World of Warcraft back in the day. I haven't touched it in 15 years and it's probably still in the lead. I play a fair bit of FFXIV these days but not like I did WoW. Asheron's Call 2 was a big part of my life for a long time but it's been offline most of my life.
Among recent games I've actively played for years, Rocket League and Minecraft are for sure at the top.
According to Steam it’s Left4Dead. That said, Steam only began tracking use in 2009. Not only do I expect my Left4Dead hours to be much higher as I played that mainly at launch in 2008, but I also think that game would be a distant second to Counterstrike Source which I played heavily around release while I was in university.
Counter-Strike:Global Offensive. 1800 hours or so. Picking it up again the past few days and god damn am I trash after having not played regularly for years.