6mo ago

Game hours in offline mode are not added to the library when you have internet access.

Suppose I play X hours on a trip when I have no internet access, and then when I have internet access I connect my Steam Deck and I would expect that if I played X hours on the trip, the hours would sync to my profile and add them to my game, but it doesn't seem to be like that, am I doing something wrong or is this a normal Steam behavior that can't be changed?

10 comments

That's how Steam has always been. It's dumb.

Last I checked offline hours didn't count either, yeah. I'm not sure if anything is supposed to have changed in the meantime, as it's been a while.

Normal steam behavior as far as I know. Steam achievements often pop when you connect however. *For the 3 or so games I have tried.
- Depends on the game. There is no functionality in Steam for buffering them offline, it's just that some games run the check for all achievements every time you load a save or gain a new achievement, while others only do it for the one you just gained.
  That's why I have "complete 40 substories" in Yakuza 4, but not the one for finishing 20 of them - it triggers when you complete the 20th, and never again.
  Meanwhile I imported a complete save to a different game for mod dev debugging purposes, and it unlocked every single achievement the game had the moment I loaded that.
  
  Yup. It's up to each games dev to write the hooks for the achievements.

~~Not sure why so many people are saying the hours don't sync, they absolutely should. I know sometimes it takes awhile to sync, but I'm not sure the exact mechanics.~~
Ok apparently I'm just wrong on this. I spend a lot of time playing offline and never noticed missing hours. I also could have sworn I read about it taking awhile to update offline hours before, but now I can't find anything like that.
- Most people are saying it, because steam simply doesn't sync offline played playing time.
  When playing offline, it temporarily tracks the offline playtime locals in your library. Butnomce you connect to the servers, it will sync up the playtime with what has been stored on valves servers, erasing any locally played game time.
- Are you sure? I just tried disconnecting my console from internet and play some game for a while and then when the play time increased I exit the game and connected to the internet and the play time was actually the same that the previous one before I connected the internet.

It doesn't even keep track of time spent playing non-Steam games through Steam, which is equally ridiculous IMO.

Is this true? A lot of my gaming in the past is offline.

10 comments