How to Track Your Game Backlog and Playtime on HowLongToBeat

HowLongToBeat (hl2b.com) lets you track a backlog and compare your playtimes, but the personal tracking features require an account. The site's own copy lists the core actions: "Catalog your gaming collection," "Import and conquer your Steam games," "Compare your game times to other players," and "Find out just how long that backlog will take to complete." If you only want to look up how long a game takes, no account is needed — the game cards are public. If you want to save games, log completions, and see your own times against the community, you need to log in first.

What you can do without an account

Browsing is open. Every game card shows three community estimates plus a combined figure, and the site explains exactly what each means:

The site states these are "our best estimate for how long it will take you to complete the game," and that clicking an individual game breaks down the stats further. Use this layer for purchase decisions — for example, checking whether a 51-hour main story fits your schedule before buying.

Creating an account and logging in

The homepage has a "Join Our Community!" section with a Login entry point. Account creation is the gate for everything personal: adding games to a profile, building a backlog, importing Steam, and comparing your times. The site does not publish pricing or payment details on this page, so treat account terms as something to confirm at signup rather than assuming free access.

Once logged in, your profile becomes the container for the games you track.

Adding games to your profile and backlog

Each game card carries an Add to Profile action — this is the mechanism for moving a game from the public catalog into your personal list. From there it becomes part of your backlog and your tracked collection.

The homepage's own framing of why this matters:

• "See if a potential game purchase is worth your hard earned money."
• "Find out just how long that backlog will take to complete."
• "Estimate how much longer your current game will last."

That third point is the practical payoff: once games are in your profile, the site can help you estimate remaining time on what you're currently playing, not just total length.

Importing your Steam library

The site explicitly offers to "Import and conquer your Steam games." This is the bulk path — instead of adding titles one at a time, you connect your Steam library and pull the collection in at once. It's the fastest way to get an existing backlog into the system, and it pairs with the site's backlog-length estimate: once imported, you can see the total time your unplayed games represent.

Marking completions and comparing your times

Two related features sit on top of a populated profile:

• Marking games completed — the homepage activity feed tracks "Games Completed," so completion is a first-class status you set on your own entries.
• Comparing your game times to other players — the site lists this as a core capability. Your logged times sit against the community's Main Story / Main + Extra / Completionist figures, which is how you find out whether you're faster or slower than the estimate.

The community activity numbers on the homepage give a sense of scale for these comparisons — recent 48-hour activity included 170 games added, 7,176 games updated, 330 new users, and 19,968 new backlogs.

A practical workflow

1. Create an account via Join Our Community! → Login.
2. Import your Steam library to seed your collection, or use Add to Profile on individual game cards.
3. Mark games as completed as you finish them.
4. Compare your recorded times against the Main Story / Main + Extra / Completionist estimates.
5. Use the backlog total to decide what to play next or whether a new purchase is worth it.

Common snags

• Personal features are behind login. If "Add to Profile" doesn't stick, you're not signed in.
• Blank estimates exist. Some newly listed games show "--" for all three categories, as seen on recent Xbox Game Pass additions like Valor Mortis and Deep Dish Dungeon. Those games have no community data yet, so there's nothing to compare against until submissions come in.
• Community numbers move. The estimates are aggregates, so a game's figures can shift as more players submit times — your comparison baseline isn't fixed.