I found out how many hours I've played DCUO!

I remember reading a thread a while back where someone asked why we couldn't see how many hours we've put into the game (with a lot of comments rightly saying "you probably wouldn't want to know, even if you could....")

Well, it turns out that people on PS5 can actually see how many hours their friends have put into each game, and I've only ever played DCUO on Playstation, so........
The other night, my friend stunned the party chat we were in by casually announcing that I had played DCUO for just under 7,000 hours!

Strangely, at first I was actually somewhat surprised it was that 'low'! I knew I'd put over 4,000 hours into Destiny 1 over a 3 year period so I thought over 7 years on DCUO it would have easily doubled that, but then another friend pointed out that 7,000 hours works out as 254 entire days, straight, and I said "Yeah......that is quite a long time actually, isn't it?"

So, if you do want to know how many hours you've put in, and you're on Playstation, ask a friend with a PS5 to break the bad news tell you.

Oh...I'll have to have a buddy (who has a PS5) check. I just checked my Steam account which also tracks hours and its already at 3200....and I only started using steam on my 'work' PC since sometime last year and I probably use it 1/10th as much as the PS4 and my gaming PC. Sheesh....I think I might jump off a bridge when I find the number...assuming it's accurate. I think I will be horrified.

They say it takes 10,000 hours of practice to get really good at playing an instrument or learn a language fluently. I'm afraid I'll find out I could be a one man band....who speaks French, Russian and Japanese.

Funny thing is, I'm not even the highest out of my friends and some of them have been playing less years

Lmao thanks I have a few friends who have PS5s I will ask them right now I'm curious now .

А вот давай проверим разговариваешь ты по русски или пиздиш как троцкий

I have never been scared of a number - until today, i never want to know my number

I wish we pc users who don't use steam could check it out but I'm also glad we can't lol

There's a way, since it was included in the census data at one time, but some people got all up in their feels about "privacy"...so here we are.

Конечно русские!

It ended up not being as much as I thought...kind of. About 7000 hours on my main PS4 account with another 5000 on my alt PS4 accounts + the 3200 under steam and probably double that on my non steam PC....so....around 20K?

Nevermind it was a lot. Better get to work on the Guitar...Comrade

All up in their feels? It's one thing to decide to openly share that data, it's another to have it just readily available to anyone without say so. There's a reason there's usually settings to this effect that either only lets friends see it or have settings that allow you to hide it.

The reality is, it's not information about someone else you really need to know.

It's also something that someone DOESN'T need to know. Time played isn't something like a home address or social security number.

It's personal information in relation to a persons playing habits, information doesn't have to be a government identifier or similar to constitute personal private information.

The census is useful in that it provides information about a players character but it infringes the privacy of the individual when it starts revealing info like that.

I openly share mine because I don't care, but i totally see why others might, your statement "all up in their feels" is quite insulting to people that wish to have a degree of privacy with their information and they're entitled to have that protection. Look in this thread some people don't even want to see it themselves let alone let other people start rummaging through their playing habits.

There's a reason other apps allow users to choose to share this info or limit who can see it and that's also why the census did so.

You'll probably also find Daybreaks privacy policy requires they protect the privacy of the players in this regard.

The dcuo forums tell you how many posts you have, when the last time you logged in, when you joined, can search for anything you have ever posted or replied to. That isn't that far off from having access to hours played in DCUO where the census currently shows every detail of your character from sp, artifacts, stats, league etc

When that released pitchforks were instantly raised about something that really isn't that much of a privacy issue, it sounds more like some would be embarrassed to know that type of information and want it hidden, which while I could understand, does sound selfish.

It's never selfish to want to control personal information, if we take another platform like steam, which holds information like this you can entirely control it yourself.

You can choose to let anyone see it, choose to let only friends see it or choose to let no one see it.

It's not out of the ordinary to let players choose this privacy setting, hence the census changed, hell when the census first came out it let people search other leagues MOTDs too, should we leave those there? A league isn't even an individual so where was the privacy issue with that one?

Curiously why do you need to know how long another player has spent playing the game? The immediate risk I see with making that information available is discrimination.

Edit; I'm not saying you plan to discriminate against others, realised that might be misinterpreted, I mean other people might

The last thing you want to be doing is giving players too much information, especially when it's already evident they behave this way with the information they already have.

In addition they probably have a responsibility to protect this sort of data in certain regions, I know the EU for example has very strict privacy laws, so they just protect all data in a blanket, because that's the best way to protect your business against a privacy complaint.

Last I checked, hours played in a game isn't a protected class. I can discriminate via a myriad of reasons, like the fact I don't like someone's name or their toon's outfit. It's kind of an irrelevant criticism. That being said, I'd like to be able to check my own hours on account/toons but because some got in their feels about it, I can't do so. If that means there's some sort of opt-in/opt-out method that needs to happen, so be it. If someone is insulted by my usage of "got in their feels", that's on them. This is a game forum, not the Algonquin Round Table. Informal speech is informal. There are quite a few turns of phrases I see around here that I don't particularly care for, but I also know how to live in a pluralistic society.

Apologies, it wasnt really the words I thought were insulting more the fact they seemed a bit dismissive of someone's else's desire to protect their information

The reason it's blocked is because it doesn't just say something about a player's character it says something about the player themselves, for what it's worth I do see your perspective, it's just when information starts to move from something strictly about your digital character and more into something about you, it's going to risk privacy issues.

I also entirely agree with you, it would be useful to let the individual see the information even if others can't and tbh if the information is on the census, but obviously blocked then why can't they just put it on a player's launcher or something, or even in a player's stat tab in game.

Oh I don't care about others I want to know myself because of others that ability was stolen from me, I would love to know how many replays badges I've bought spent, how many stabilizer keys, how much total artifact nth metal ive collected and spent, but im sure peoples emotions would get in the way of that as well.