Are historic Steam playtime stats available?
I know that Steam tracks certain stats related to the amount of time I've played games in my library. The stats that I'm aware of are:
- Time of my current session
- Time spent playing a game over the last two weeks
- Time spent playing a game overall (ignoring time before Steam started counting)
What I would like is to be able to access more detailed information. I want to graph things like how often I am playing a game at certain times of day, or on each day of the week. I've got a lot of similar ideas, but all of them basically require knowing exactly when I started and stopped each session - potentially over a very long time.
Does Steam already store this data, or only the information in the list above? If it is, can I query it through an API? I'd assume it would have to be stored on their servers since it's able to be viewed through browsers and the mobile app.
If it isn't queryable through an API, is it possible to track it locally? Is the "current session" counter stored somewhere locally and in a readable format? Could I write a script to scrape it every minute and log the data out? This would allow me to gather the data starting now, at least - it's not the perfect solution but it's something.
Best Answer
There may be a solution, if you do not mind digging a bit, on a Windows PC there is a file (or two) in your steam install folder: ..\Steam\logs\controller_ui.txt and ..\Steam\logs\controller_ui.previous.txt which contain logging info on when you started and stopped a steam app (game).
it has rows like this:
[2021-02-05 10:22:26] Starting app 305620
[2021-02-05 12:57:30] Exiting app 305620
The App IDs you can look up online, e.g. on steamdb.info
There is also other info in these files, but with a bit of (Excel) tweaking you can filter it and get your history.
It appears that this file has a 256 KB max limit, so when exceeding that it creates a backup and starts a new one, so you may not be able to go back to prehistoric ages..., but at least a couple months/years (depending on your level of addiction). Also, if you are playing on multiple computers, you may need to look them up separately.
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How do I check my Steam playtime history?
Click \u201cHome\u201d from the context menu. In the menu to the left, you should see the list of your games. Click on the game title to open in the main screen. If you've played that game already, you should be able to see the category \u201cPlay Time\u201d, right beneath the game's title.Can you sort by hours played on Steam?
You can now sort by hours played in your Steam Library.How to Boost Playtime/Hours on Steam in 2021
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Answer 2
https://steamtime.info/ gives you some of this information on this based on your Steam ID.
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Images: Gabriela Palai, E M, E M, Pixabay