Does Steam include AFK hours?

As an avid PC gamer and content creator focused on the latest gaming news and trends, one issue I get asked about often is Steam‘s policy around tracking in-game time across their massive library of titles. Specifically – does Steam count hours spent away from keyboard (AFK) towards your total playtime?

The short answer is yes. But the specifics of what Steam considers "playtime" versus "AFK time" and how their system tallies hours warrants a much deeper dive.

In this comprehensive guide, I‘ll cover:

• Exactly how Steam measures active versus idle time spent in games
• Debates and frustrations around this tracking system‘s accuracy
• Methods players use to exploit Steam‘s hour counting
• Valve‘s evolving approach to playtime tracking over the years

My goal is to provide expert analysis based on over a decade actively participating in the platform as a player and creator. Let‘s investigate!

Steam‘s Philosophy Around Playtime Tracking

As the leading digital storefront and community hub for PC gaming created by legendary studio Valve, Steam provides players unprecedented visibility into their gaming habits through playtime tracking.

Introduced in 2009, this system tallies up every minute you spend in games Steam has launched to showcase your dedication. Displaying playtime publicly has fueled a culture of competition around boasting hours as a badge of honor.

But Valve‘s definition of "playtime" is extremely broad – any time a game‘s status shows as "Running," hours get added to your tally, even if you‘ve minimized, tabbed out, or walked away with the game still open.

For developers, accurately separating active players from those just AFK is paramount for understanding engagement. But Valve continues counting both towards playtime. This has caused ongoing tensions with players and studios.

Granularity Around Tracking Active vs. Idle Time

Players have long requested more granular tracking to discount AFK hours. But Steam still does not distinguish between active and inactive time spent in-game.

Instead, Valve relies on two binary statuses:

• Running – The game is open, connected to Steam servers, and actively tracking time
• Not Running – The game is closed or Steam is offline, pausing tracking

So from Steam‘s perspective, walking away while the game window is still open qualifies as activity. Even background processes like matchmaking contribute to your playtime by keeping the process technically "Running."

However, there are a few specific cases where time will not accrue while the game still shows as Running, such as:

• The game crashes or closes unexpectedly
• Your PC enters sleep or hibernate mode
• You lose internet connectivity temporarily

Besides these exceptions, Steam logs every minute the process continues running.

This approach angers players who feel their public playtime gets inflated by queue timers, AFK periods, and other non-gameplay moments. But Valve stands behind this tracking philosophy.

Data Around Global Steam Playtime & Player Counts

According to a March 2022 Escapist Magazine analysis of public data, the average Steam player spends nearly 9 hours actively gaming every week.

Extrapolating out based on Steam‘s monthly active users of 120 million, that equates to:

• 1 billion hours logged every week across the platform
• 4 billion hours every month
• 48 billion annually

To put this mind-boggling amount of tracked time in perspective:

And remember – due to AFK time counting, these astronomically high totals include both active gameplay but also inactive moments!

This systemic inflated playtime does frustrate many in the community. But it also feeds into gamer competition and psychology…

Impacts on Gaming Culture & Psychology

Displaying playtime publicly fueled the rise of "completionist" culture – the drive to 100% finish games and max out tracked metrics as a badge of honor.

But as tracking accuracy issues emerged, a subset of players began exploiting the system to falsely signal more impressive game mastery and commitment.

AFK Farming

Starting in 2007, some players utilized AFK farming tricks to rack up playtime without actively playing:

• Rubber-banding controllers to walk in circles
• Using macros and keyboard/mouse automation
• Looping simple actions like jumping repeatedly

These tactics fooled Steam‘s running-time tracking while being AFK or even away from their PCs.

Some players run AFK farming operations across dozens of accounts or multiple games simultaneously thanks to virtualization tools and automation scripts.

While explicitly against Steam rules, AFK farming remains common enough that tutorials and dedicated software exist facilitating massive false playtime gains.

This further inflames tensions around Steam‘s playtime tracking accuracy and inability to separate AFK and active hours.

Psychology of Displaying Impressive Playtime

AFK farming stems partially from human psychology and pressures around publicly proving gaming dedication through playtime.

Displaying high playtime can signal veteran status, mastery of game mechanics, and devotion to certain titles every player deeply enjoys.

But for those lacking free time to actively play for hundreds or thousands of hours, AFK farming offers a shortcut to impress friends and strangers by inflating your visible dedication artificially.

These social pressures and competition fuel the demand for falsely boosting playtime higher, despite violating Steam‘s rules.

Evolving Approaches to Playtime Tracking

This longstanding controversy has caused Steam to continually revisit their playtime tracking philosophy over the past decade without fully addressing core complaints around tracking accuracy.

Playtime Publicity Control

In 2017, Steam finally allowed players to mark their entire game details section private, hiding playtime from public view while still tracking hours internally.

This relieved some social pressures around playtime numbers. But clamoring continued for discounting idle time from totals or noting it separately.

Launch of Steam Labs Experiments

In 2019, Steam introduced a Labs section of experimental new features like game recommendations.

Fans hoped for Labs experiments around more accurate playtime tracking. But none have emerged so far.

However, one Labs game recommendation tool does suggest new games based on your favorite titles‘ playstyles, hinting at algorithmic approaches for clustering players by activity patterns.

Developers Request Playtime Details Breakdowns

More recently in 2022, several major game studios like Ubisoft requested additional playtime tracking details from Valve including:

• Percentages of players reaching key game milestones
• Separating active and idle time spent per player
• Trends around play session lengths
• Comparisons between completion rates and playtime

These added sub-classifications would help developers understand engagement patterns and guide design choices without inflating playtime totals unfairly through AFK hours.

But Valve has not yet responded to these updated appeals – perpetuating the systemic playtime accuracy issues.

How Other Gaming Platforms Track Playtime

Steam is not alone in tracking playtime across games. Comparing Valve‘s approach to other major players in the ecosystem spotlights areas providing gamers more transparency.

Xbox Playtime Tracking

For Xbox console gaming, players can view per-game active playtime through profile stats broken down by specific sessions and dates.

Microsoft‘s definition of active play requires direct inputs like:

• Pressing buttons on controllers
• Interacting via Kinect motion controls
• Using media remote commands

Leaving a game idle or minimizing won‘t contribute towards rising totals – avoiding Steam‘s AFK inflation issue.

PlayStation Playtime Tracking

Sony similarly shares per-game playtime statistics through PSN profiles including your first and last play session dates.

PlayStation also triggers an inactivity timeout during matchmaking or loading screens to pause tracking. Then input resumes tallying active gameplay time.

This timeout threshold provides PlayStation players added transparency around when they stopped actively playing or entered lengthy loading modes versus full engagement.

GOG Galaxy Playtime Tracking

For DRM-free games, GOG Galaxy tracks but does not display playtime publicly at all. However, players can optionally expose playtime as a statistic alongside achievements.

GOG Galaxyplaytime counting respects when games close and does not log offline usage with tighter accuracy than Steam. But no further sub-divisions beyond the total hours exist.

Epic Games Store Playtime Tracking

With Epic still ramping up their fledgling game storefront features, playtime stats remain wholly unavailable currently.

But Epic representatives confirm playtime tracking is under development for a future storefront update. Hopefully they follow other industry examples sharing enhanced detail.

The Future of Steam Playtime Tracking

While Valve pioneered ubiquitous playtime tracking on PC, accuracy issues persist causing ongoing unease around misrepresenting engagement versus active gameplay.

As gaming culture grows more attuned to metrics capturing daily activity like step counts or social media scroll times, players demand equal transparency around their gaming data.

Steam sits at the precipice of an opportunity to leverage machine learning for detecting inactive patterns like repetitive actions, extended minimization, queueing exposures etc.

One vision leverages experimenting through Steam Labs to develop an Enhanced Playtime Algorithm learning to classify active versus AFK behavior – perhaps even tuning sensitivity based on specific game mechanics prone to idling like inventory management.

Capturing a breadth of behavioral signals and applying clustering could separate engagements styles statistically across any game – finally quantifying the proportion of AFK instances within totals currently in feasible via manual review at Steam‘s vast scale.

These innovative approaches would build goodwill through responding to years of crowdsourced complaints, especially if new segmented playtime classifications get added to game Personal Game Data pages for consumer review. Extending these analyses to developers in anonymized reports also covers their appeal for added analytics dimensions that retain user privacy standards.

Of course, risks around biasing design decisions towards egregious engagement optimizing and surveillance capitalism style tracking without consent demonstrate pitfalls to avoid as well by carefully assessing what gets presented publicly versus analyzed privately for experiences improvements.

But exploring avenues to give gamers deeper insights into their play patterns via opt-in study groups could make progress incrementally towards fairer evaluations around activity versus inflation through semantics – ultimately unlocking achievements in transparency towards consumer trust and community rapport through data-informed dialog around gameplay time well spent.