Steam and the recently played games jump list

I know of only one way that this can happen in windows, and has nothing to do with Steam other than their not-so-great decision to install all content into Program Files.

If you are on Windows 7 or Windows Vista, and you have UAC set to ON, then change it later to OFF, this can happen.

UAC does thing evil thing where if a program tries to write to a "protected" area like Program Files, EVEN IF YOU ARE ADMINISTRATOR, when you get a UAC prompt and give permission, it actually writes any files that would normally go into that directory into a "virtualized" directory somewhere else.

If you turn off UAC, that will no longer happen, and as an awesome bonus, it will no longer know about the files that it virtualized.

So in your case, if you had UAC on, installed a ton of games, then later got sick of UAC and turned it off, this would happen as you described.

See the second paragraph in "Features" in the article on User Account Control.

If you have done this and turn on UAC again, your content will come back, but be a TOTAL mess because if you've downloaded more stuff with UAC off, then that will be invisible when you turn UAC on, and vice versa.

this drove me a little crazy once before I realized what was happening.

i'm curious to know if this is your issue.

You also have to take into account the fact that since the "Total playtime" feature has been introduce about two years ago, it didn't count all the hours you've been playing before. According to this article, gameplay hours are recording since March 2009 exactly. For instance, I've been playing CS 1.6 A LOT several years ago, and I only have something like 30 hours "on record" (because I don't play it anymore).

You can read players reacting about this over here: http://www.wegame.com/forums/general-gaming-discussion/steam-now-reports-all-time-play-time//#post-439405

Steam now reports all-time play time Finally! The stats seem to have started their count about a year ago, so it's not all-all-time, but it's a welcome addition nonetheless. Other programs like Xfire (and even WeGame!) have recorded and reported this info for quite some time.

I know, it can be kinda depressing for a hardcore gamer ;)