“Time Played” is completely off

[Gerardus94 16]

2 hours ago, hydruxxo said:

So uh...yeah, it looks like it might be broken again as of this afternoon. Anyone else?

I just checked, seems to be the case, too soon to be broken again, i wonder if sony will ever fix it permanently.

[TheRetroManiac 255]

Lol yup it's BROKEN again for sure, pathetic.

[hydruxxo 34]

1 hour ago, Gerardus94 said:

I just checked, seems to be the case, too soon to be broken again, i wonder if sony will ever fix it permanently.

I lost hope that they'll ever fix it permanently unfortunately. I figured it'd at least make it more than a week before breaking again though, yet here we are again lol.

[mrmivo 87]

Was it just a fluke and fixed itself quickly? It’s been working for me and my times look correct (in line with PS Tracker), but I didn’t play much between the years so may have skipped the issue.

[TheRetroManiac 255]

1 hour ago, mrmivo said:

Was it just a fluke and fixed itself quickly? It’s been working for me and my times look correct (in line with PS Tracker), but I didn’t play much between the years so may have skipped the issue.

Yeah, it was fixed pretty quickly, which makes a change.

[RED-Z0nY- 2]

The hours played on my end is delayed for several minutes to half an hour. Normally it would update right away after closing a game, but it's better than not updating at all 😁 

[hydruxxo 34]

Seems busted again to me. Been over an hour since I played something and it still hasn't updated. I'm so tired of this.

[mrmivo 87]

Yeah. I just put down my console playtime as of Dec 31, on my spreadsheet, and from now on add the monthly hours from the PS Timetracker log - for games that I started before I began using the tracker. For "newer" games, I just use the tracker times.

 

It's surprising to me that Sony can't get a basic feature like this working. I've never had problems of this type in 20 years of using Steam. Nintendo's online is fairly poor, and their time tracking also has issues (won't track properly if you use two consoles, only goes up in 5 hour increments, is not properly saved on the server side), but as long as you use one console, it's accurate on the console. Sony, whose online architecture is far superior, can't get this right, even though the annual summary showed that they do have correct data. It's just not the data shown on the console.

 

Well, eventually they'll fix it.

[Gildo1993 88]

Currently using https://ps-timetracker.com/ to track my times and it's all good now. Their tracking bot thing is extremely accurate. Sony's attempt at tracking times is just subpar and not good, unfortunately. Would much rather not have to rely on third party sites to do that, but what can we do.

Edited January 7 by Gildo1993

[starcrunch061 10,889]

On 1/4/2023 at 4:19 PM, mrmivo said:

It's surprising to me that Sony can't get a basic feature like this working. 

Theoretically, maybe, but Sony manages to screw up a lot if things.

[hydruxxo 34]

Edit: nevermind

Edited January 29 by hydruxxo

[Sicho 702]

sorry I have not read the whole thread so I don't know if someone else already had the same idea but my assumption is that, at least on PS4, it kept counting when you put the console in Rest mode while the game was still running.

 

As much as I loved Bloodborne, I haven't played it for 127 hours  I also haven't played Witcher 3 for 202 hours and I'm also quite sure I didn't clock 160 hours in MGS V or 102h in WWE 2K18  

[PNMotorsportUK 19]

Doesn't look like it's working for me again this morning haha. About right for it breaking every month. 

[RED-Z0nY- 2]

The times are only delayed on my end. The games will update after 10-15 minutes.

[Galserik 57]

I think it always worked like shit. I have lots of games that I played 60-70-80hrs and the tracker says 10. O even the same game split in 2 tracking 2hrs and 30hrs... things like that.

[mrmivo 87]

Yep, it seems to be generally unreliable even when there are no week-long outages. I manually (on paper) tracked my times, and also with the PS-Timetracker site, in January.  My manual results match the tracking site’s numbers, but the times recorded on the console are partially inaccurate. Five hours missing here, ten there. I’m now just using the site for getting numbers and add them to my spreadsheet once a month. That takes the least amount of effort and probably gives me the most accurate stats. Would still be better if the console tracking worked reliably, especially since we know from the yearly recaps that Sony does have accurate data.

[The3PointSha 5]

I've noticed my time update after closing app. If the app is open and I check, it doesn't change. At least not on Dead Space

[ChiefMichigan 536]

Most of my times tend to be pretty accurate, but recently it's not been tallying Persona 3 properly. I have over 40 hours into it right now, and my PSN profile says 29 hours. Goat Simulator 3 is also off by about 2-3 hours. I think I put over 12 into it, but PSN says 9 hours. Fingers crossed it doesn't get more inaccurate and they find a way to make the timekeeping more accurate. 

[Long-Ryde 182]

OKay so in my experience, coming from someone who also times their gaming on Toggl (a separate app), The Time played feature is pretty accurate for something that's assuming when I'm actually playing the game. 

 

I usually start my timer when I get into the game, not at the start screen in case I want to smoke or chill for a second before playing. So I'll have the game open for longer than I'm actually playing on Toggl, but the times match like 80% of the time. In the cases when they don't match, it's either off by a handful of hours, or says like 0 or 1 hour, so I'm not sure what's up with that.

 

Overall, when it's accurate, it's accurate, but there must be something funky with when i starts and stops your gameplay time.

[hydruxxo 34]

Yeah it seems busted again. Hasn't updated for the last day or so for me.

[Thedah 1,265]

Bugged for me as well. I've been turboing Injustice 2 for the past 72 hours through remote play on my PC and it's saying I've played 0 hours. Unless remote play doesn't count the hours?

[hydruxxo 34]

What makes this bug even worse now is that with the latest PS5 firmware beta it now shows each game's time played tracker on the front page underneath the game tile in addition to it being in your profile like it already was. It's just crazy to me that they're putting even more of an emphasis on showing the time played for games but still put no effort into fixing the bug that has been making the time played tracker be inconsistent and inaccurate for over a year.

Edited February 4 by hydruxxo

[PNMotorsportUK 19]

38 minutes ago, hydruxxo said:

What makes this bug even worse now is that with the latest PS5 firmware beta it now shows each game's time played tracker on the front page underneath the game tile in addition to it being in your profile like it already was. It's just crazy to me that they're putting even more of an emphasis on showing the time played for games but still put no effort into fixing the bug that has been making the time played tracker be inconsistent and inaccurate for over a year.

 

 

Might be why it's not working again too.

 

I have no interest I Discord on my ps5. If I want to chat to players on other platforms I'll use them platforms. 

 

The time played not working does annoy me as i like things to work. If steam and Microsoft can get this right, why can't Sony.... 

[mrmivo 87]

I think at this point my main hope is that Sony switches to using the other set of data they collect (the one they use for annual recaps and that can be requested from them under GDPR/CCPA regulations), as that data seems to be accurate. Even if they fixed the monthly recurring issue with local tracking, the old data of the past two years would still be flawed.

[CameronM1tchell 20]

Think its busted again, played for the first time in a week last night, not tracking 12 hours of DiRT 5 rip.