What Steam hours actually measure
Steam's playtime number is the most quoted stat in PC gaming and also the most misunderstood. Here is what it does and does not count.
Playtime is time the game process was open
Steam counts every minute a game launched through Steam is running, whether you are in a match, in a menu, or away from the keyboard. A game left open overnight adds eight hours. Idle farming for trading cards adds hours. This is why some profiles show thousands of hours in a game the owner barely played. EveryGameStat shows the number Steam reports and does not try to guess which hours were real, because there is no honest way to do that.
Two numbers: total and last two weeks
Steam keeps a lifetime total per game and a rolling two-week total. The card uses the lifetime total. The recent number is what Steam shows as "played in the last 2 weeks" on your profile and is used on the site to work out what you have been playing recently.
Offline play and non-Steam games
Playtime accrues in offline mode and is uploaded the next time Steam connects. Games added to Steam as a non-Steam shortcut are not tracked by Steam's API at all, even though the client shows hours for them locally. Games launched outside Steam, for example directly from an exe, do not count.
Why the card total is smaller than the sum of the games
EveryGameStat removes known software from the card totals: Wallpaper Engine, Soundpad, streaming tools and similar apps that Steam counts as games. They still appear in your library, marked as software, but they do not inflate your hours or your leaderboard position. The filter is a maintained list, so if something slips through, report it.
Hours across platforms
Only some platforms publish playtime. Steam does. Xbox does not, through its public API. PlayStation reports play duration for many titles, but not all. So a card total is a sum of what is available, not of everything you ever played. The platform breakdown on the card makes that visible instead of hiding it in one big number.
Achievements next to hours
Steam reports achievements per game together with the total count and the global unlock rate of each one. EveryGameStat uses the unlock rate to sort your achievements by rarity on the game page, so a 1% achievement stands out from a 90% one. The percentage on your card is earned divided by total across every game that has achievements.
