hl2b.com

HowLongToBeat breaks each game's playtime into four categories so you can match the estimate to your own play style. Main Story covers just the required objectives needed to reach the credits. Main + Extra adds optional quests, collectibles, and side content. Completionist assumes you chase every achievement and unlockable for 100% completion. Combined blends all play styles into a single estimate. Pick the category that describes how you actually play, not the one that sounds most impressive.

The four categories explained

How to read the numbers on a game card

Each game card shows the three play-style estimates side by side, plus a Combined figure. For example, the site lists The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt at 51½ hours for Main Story, 104 hours for Main + Extra, and 175 hours for Completionist. Red Dead Redemption 2 shows 51 hours, 84½ hours, and 195 hours respectively. The gap between categories tells you how much optional content exists — a large jump from Main Story to Completionist means the game rewards exploration heavily.

Which category should you use?

• Short on time or trying a genre: Use Main Story to judge whether you can finish before your interest runs out.
• You like side quests but not collect-a-thons: Main + Extra is usually the closest match.
• You hunt achievements: Completionist is your number, but expect it to be the least predictable since it depends on skill and RNG.
• Comparing two games: Compare the same category across both. A 20-hour Main Story versus a 60-hour Completionist is not a fair fight.

Why the estimates vary

These numbers are community-submitted and averaged, so they reflect real player experiences rather than developer claims. A game with few submissions may show "--" for some categories, meaning there isn't enough data yet. The Combined figure smooths out outliers, but it can understate or overstate your personal time if your play style sits at an extreme.

Practical tips

• Click into an individual game page for a fuller breakdown of the stats behind each category.
• Treat Main Story as a floor and Completionist as a ceiling; your actual time will usually land somewhere between.
• If a game shows no Completionist estimate, that often means the achievement list is new or the game is too recent for enough data.
• Use the categories to plan a backlog: sum the Main Story times for a realistic "how long will this take" answer, or the Completionist times if you plan to 100% everything.

HowLongToBeat.com is a community-driven database for estimating how long it takes to finish video games. It is useful if you want to judge whether a game fits your available time, plan how long your backlog will take, or compare your own completion times against other players. The site organizes each game's estimate into play-style categories rather than giving a single number.

What the site does

The core purpose is answering the question in its name: how long to beat a given game. Each game page breaks the estimate down by how thoroughly you play:

The site describes these as best estimates for how long a game will take based on the category that matches your play style. You can also open individual games to break down the underlying stats.

Beyond single game lookups

HowLongToBeat also works as a tracking and planning tool, not just a reference:

• Catalog your collection — keep a record of the games you own or are playing.
• Import Steam games — pull in your Steam library rather than adding titles one by one.
• Track your backlog — see how long your unfinished games would take in total.
• Estimate your current game — get a sense of how much longer a game in progress will last.
• Compare times — check your completion times against other players.
• Decide on purchases — use the estimates to judge whether a potential buy is worth the time investment.

Community and extra features

The numbers come from player submissions, so the database grows and updates continuously. The homepage shows recent activity — for example, games added and updated, new users, new backlogs, and games completed within the last 48 hours — along with forum threads and posts.

There is also a separate daily feature called HowLongToBeat: The Game, described as a round-based daily guessing game.

Reading the numbers in practice

Popular entries illustrate how wide the range can be. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is listed at about 51½ hours for the main story, 104 hours for main plus extra, and 175 hours for completionist. Red Dead Redemption 2 runs roughly 51 hours, 84½ hours, and 195 hours across the same three categories. Cyberpunk 2077 sits at about 26, 63, and 109 hours. The gap between "just the story" and "everything" is often two to four times the main-story figure, which is the main reason a single average would be misleading.

When it is the right tool

Use HowLongToBeat when your decision depends on time: choosing what to play next, sizing up a backlog, or setting expectations before buying. Treat the figures as community estimates rather than fixed lengths — your own pace, difficulty settings, and how much side content you engage with will shift the real number. The category breakdown is what makes the estimate usable, so pick the row that matches how you actually play.

HowLongToBeat (HLTB) builds its time estimates from player-submitted completion times, not from developer statements or reviewer playthroughs. When you finish a game, you can submit how long it took and which play style you followed; the site then aggregates those submissions into the Main Story, Main + Extra, Completionist, and Combined figures shown on each game card. The numbers are therefore a community average of real playthroughs, and they shift as more people submit. Treat them as a well-populated estimate rather than a fixed spec.

Where the data comes from

The core input is user submissions. Each submission records a completion time and a category, so the site can separate a rushed main-story run from a completionist grind instead of blending them into one misleading number.

The page evidence supports this directly: the site invites users to "submit your game times," and the community activity feed shows ongoing volume — 170 games added, 7,176 games updated, 19,968 new backlogs, and 5,358 games completed in a 48-hour window. That churn is why a game's listed hours can move over time.

How the categories are defined

HLTB asks you to pick the category that best matches how you played, then reports an estimate for that style. The site's own definitions:

Because each category is estimated separately, the gap between them is often large. On the same page, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt shows 51½ hours for Main Story, 104 hours for Main + Extra, and 175 hours for Completionist. Red Dead Redemption 2 runs 51 hours, 84½ hours, and 195 hours across the same three tiers. That spread is the point: it tells you which number applies to how you intend to play.

Why the numbers are averages, not exact answers

Each figure is an aggregate of many individual submissions, so it reflects the typical player rather than any single run. A few things follow from that:

• Your result will differ. Skill, difficulty setting, exploration habits, and whether you replay sections all push your time away from the average.
• Sparse games are less reliable. A game with thousands of submissions gives a stable estimate; a newly added title with few reports may show blank or provisional values. On the page, several recent Game Pass entries list "--" for every category, meaning no usable data yet.
• The estimate updates. As the "Games Updated" count suggests, entries are revised continuously as new times come in.

How to use the estimates well

1. Pick the category that matches your intent. If you only want the credits, read Main Story. If you do side content, read Main + Extra. Only use Completionist if you actually plan to 100% it.
2. Check the sample size indirectly. A game with a long history and heavy community activity (like the Witcher 3 or Red Dead Redemption 2 examples) will have a more settled number than a brand-new release.
3. Compare against your own history. If you consistently run longer than HLTB's Main Story figure, mentally adjust upward.
4. Use it for planning, not precision. The site frames the numbers as "our best estimate for how long it will take you to complete the game" — an estimate, not a guarantee.

Common questions

Are the times official? No. They come from player submissions aggregated by the site, not from publishers.

Why do the categories differ so much? Because they measure different play styles. A completionist run of Red Dead Redemption 2 (195 hours) is nearly four times the main-story figure (51 hours).

Why does a game show no time? It likely has too few submissions to produce a reliable estimate, which is common for very new or niche titles.

Can I contribute? Yes — submitting your own completion time is how the dataset grows and stays current.

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.

HowLongToBeat (hl2b.com) gives you community-submitted playtime estimates broken into three categories — Main Story, Main + Extra, and Completionist — so you can compare a game's time commitment against your available hours before spending money. It works best as a time-cost filter: if a 60-hour RPG won't fit your schedule, the site tells you that in seconds. It does not tell you whether a game is good, only how long it takes.

The three categories, and what each one answers

The site's own "How Game Cards Work" section defines them:

A fourth figure, Combined, averages all play styles together.

The gap between categories is often the most useful number. On the site's popular games list, Red Dead Redemption 2 shows 51 hours for Main Story but 195 hours for Completionist — a 144-hour spread. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt runs 51½ hours main story versus 175 hours completionist. If you're a "finish the story and move on" player, the Main Story figure is your real budget, not the headline number people quote online.

How to use it for a purchase decision

1. Look up the specific game on hl2b.com and read all three category times, not just the first one.
2. Match the category to your actual play style. Be honest — if you always chase side quests, use Main + Extra, not Main Story.
3. Convert hours into weeks. Divide by your realistic weekly playtime. A 46-hour Main + Extra game at 8 hours a week is roughly six weeks of your gaming time.
4. Compare against alternatives. If two games cost similar amounts, the one with more hours per dollar may or may not be the better buy — a tight 13-hour game you finish beats a 100-hour game you abandon at hour 20.
5. Check whether the game is worth it to you, which the site frames directly as "See if a potential game purchase is worth your hard earned money."

Reading the numbers critically

Playtime data is community-submitted, so treat it as a median, not a promise:

• Small sample sizes skew results. Newly added games may show -- for some categories (as several Xbox Game Pass titles do on the homepage) because too few players have submitted times.
• Your pace may differ. Difficulty settings, exploration habits, and whether you fast-travel all move the number.
• The site updates constantly. Its homepage reports games added and updated in the last 48 hours, so figures for a recent release can shift significantly in the first weeks.
• Completionist times are the least reliable for judging value unless you genuinely 100% games — most players never reach that number.

Beyond the time estimate

HowLongToBeat also lets you catalog your collection, import your Steam library, track a backlog, and compare your own times against other players. The backlog feature is the practical companion to the purchase question: it shows you the total hours already queued up, which is often the strongest argument against buying another 100-hour game right now.

Bottom line: use HowLongToBeat to answer "can I fit this game into my life, and what will it cost me in hours?" Use reviews, trailers, and genre preference to answer "will I enjoy it?" The site is a time-budget tool, not a quality score.