I use it to only measure money/time value you got out of a game. I don't use stats to measure skill, I can tell well enough by the way I play with said friend.

If I played a $50 for 5 hours then that's $10/hour. It's expensive, but if it was a blast, then at least it's cheaper than a night out. If I have 100 or more hours clocked, that's under $0.50/hr of entertainment so quite worth it imo. I'd basically check it when I'm on the fence about shelling out cash.

Are you sure he's not playing at work as well? Stats are cool, but it doesn't really matter to me or my friends.

I occasionally use friends' play time stats as a kind of recommendation list: If someone with taste similar to my own is playing a game consistently, I'm more likely to give it a try.

It's also sometimes interesting to look at their achievements to get hints about play styles that I haven't tried or secrets that I haven't discovered.

Other than that, I don't care about stats at all.

By the way, the play time counter is meaningless for competition, unless you're competing for who can burn the most electricity. It includes time spent paused, or in menus, or at the title screen.

I actually like stats and might be ocd about them in some cases. As a retired rust player hours in game was a huge thing while looking at other players on servers and me and my friends would always compare etc but some of them would fall asleep with game on in server and then say they have more hours... But anyway I also like to achievement hunt but do wish completed games did something more to my profile such as level. I also like playtime in other games to see price per hour example being I bought a game for like 20$ maybe and played it for 100 hours that's great. But if you inflate or chest your stats they are not worth anything anymore to me at least.

Not a stats guy myself. At most, I get trophies out of something that feels a bit like OCD. Ultimately, I just want to have fun with my games, and not to boast them around. And tbh, one of the reasons I started dropping Steam was precisely the enforced social features (still use it, but now I'm finishing more games than I get instead).

Personally, I pay attention to it, but only as a casual, friendly competition between friends. The sort of thing where someone will brag aboubt their 20 year badge, show off achivememts, or compare playtime in games, but none of us are particularly serious about it, and we keep in mind the circumstances around those stats, such as ignoring hours if the person leaves the game open, or achivements gained by external means.