What are the best paid modern game you play?

I have several games that are between 100 and 500 hours that I loved to play:

War for the Overwold Best modern DK clone
Tortured Hearts Awesome Indie RPG (not for everyone, though)
Empires of the Undergrowth Very good RTS/ant management colony
Spellcaster University Fun Harry Potter like school management

I'd add that most of these games were purchased at full price, because I saw something in them.

I bought Skyrim in 2013, have 2500 hours in it. Probably have a few hundred more, I beat it twice on a pirated copy before I managed to persuade my mom to buy it for me on a sale, and spent countless hours modding it. I think my next playthrough will be in the Special Edition though, so that number won't increase.

I also played Garry's Mod for 2400 hours after buying it in 2010 or 2011. I stopped playing around 2017 after my favourite server went down, but it provided me with a lot of memories and friends. I don't think we'll ever get something like Gmod ever again, there's too much financial incentive and predatory practices that make people addicted to chasing some unobtainable goal rather than just having fun, and spending money on endless microtransactions (eg. Roblox, nearly any live service game).

ignoring AAA stuff
Death Must Die
The Last Spell
Monster Train - I bought this well before it got bundled(I got it in 2020)

all 3 have near or above 100 hours

We've gotten a very lot of play out of Armored Core 6, Earth Defense Force World Brothers (couch co-op), HoloCure (free, totally worth playing if that's a game type you like, and worth checking out if you want to try the game style), Hades, Stardew Valley, Horizon Zero Dawn and FW, Shovel Knight.

Games that have less play time that have stuck with me: ForeTales, Potion Permit, Moonlighter, Nuclear Blaze, Sleeping Dogs.

Guild Wars, Counter-Strike: Source and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive are my most played games. Forgot how much I've played Guild Wars, but both CS games are over 600h.

Baldur's Gate 3, Elden Ring, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, and Witcher 3 are the modern games I've spent the most time playing.

I can see my American Truck Simulator hours stacking up over the years to come though.

Slay the Spire and Enter the Gungeon seems to always rack up hours on my playlist, but both are still between 50-100 hours. I always have them installed and can't imagine uninstalling them anytime soon.

The only recent game I can remember having put more than 100 hours was Zelda: BotW with the Champion's Ballad DLC. I also played Stardew Valley for 75+ hours before I lost track of what I was doing. Clocked 50-70hr into each of the Deus Ex's games, except for Invisible War. Around 50hr for Fallout 1 and 75hr fo Fallout 2.

As a child I used to put a lot of hours on JRPGs. Had more than 120hr on my memory card in Breath of Fire IV, and probably multiple 50-100hr playthroughs of both Final Fantasy VIII and IX.

Most of my favourite games are short adventure ones (like The Cat Lady, Indika or Oxenfree) or relatively compact RPGs (Disco Elysium or Black Book), but I do also play lengthy story-rich stuff — according to my Steam profile, I have, for example, 442 hours in The Witcher 3, almost 300 hours in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous (and I'm yet to do several DLCs for the current playthrough), 210 hours in Mass Effect Legendary Edition (needless to say, I also played the trilogy before this edition a couple of times), 183 hours in Cyberpunk 2077, 180 hours in Dragon Age Inquisition (I'm among the few who love it) and 150 hours in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire.

Still, nothing would probably ever be able to compare with an amount of time I used to sink into Sims 2 and then 3 :)

Edit: apparently I can't read, removed old stuff from the post.

It has to be Slay the Spire. Steam says I have 485 hours played, but I know it is much more than that if I count offline time.
Monster Train - 157 hrs
Fairy Solitaire Harvest - 134 hrs
Stardew Valley -110 hours
Ring of Pain - 85 hrs

You can see a pattern here. I play a lot of card games. lol.

vampire survivors

I really enjoyed State of Decay 2, Symphony of War the Nephilim Sage, Fallout 4, Pathfinder Kingmaker, Starfield, Wasteland 2 & 3, X-Com 1 & 2
Right now I can't stop playing Eiyuden Chronicle

Unchallenged in their own style :
Kingdom Come - 200h didn't regret a dime on this one, especially for the forest walks
Heaven's Vault - best indie, the translation gameplay was never seen before and i really felt like an adventurous space archaeologist, it's a game often mentioned as an answer to this question

and just to mention them :
Ixion / Frostpunk - it's like living a science fiction novel
Redout - the best wipeout-like by a mile, speed feeling
Dishonored 2 - tbh i didn't like much the ambiance but this level-design is unmatched

Apparently I spent 2300 hours on Europa Universalis IV (EU4) 😅 Then I got tired of it because they kept changing the rules with every DLC released.

I also gave Impertor: Rome a good try (~480 hours) and of course Slay the Spire and Tabletop Simulator (both 196 hours).

At the time I was self-employed, which meant I had a lot more free time.

Dragon Age: Origins/Awakening
Baldur's Gate 3.

I bought BG3 twelve days ago and I'm 80 hours in. I guess I got my money's worth. Someday I will step outside my apartment again.

If I count all 3 Beat Hazard games together, I have a combined total of 1,045.2 hours on Steam, more on versions on other platforms. They've been my go-to games for chilling out and exploring my music collection for well over a decade now. (To be clear these games are NOT chill! My idea of chilling out happens to be playing a frantic, seizure-inducing twin-stick shooter to very loud music).

My other top games:

XCOM2: 730.5hrs - my favorite things in games are squad-based tactics, replayability, and deep customization options. This game checks all of those boxes, and is one of the best examples of a tactics game I've ever played. About half of my playtime was spent in the character creator or in testing my own mods.

Skyrim (not going to bother linking this - we all know what it is): 493.2hrs - Not a tactics game, but it has customization and replayability to spare. It's the mods that kept me playing. I always manage to go overboard with them them and break my save, forcing me to start over....

Wildermyth: 380.4hrs - I got this in a Jingle Jam bundle a couple of years ago, and it's largely consumed my life since. Another squad-based tactics game with lots of customization and mod options. And the gameplay is based around playing new runs and building up your character legacy. Pretty much my ideal game. I fully intend to 100% this one, so those hours are going to keep climbing.

Elder scrolls online is my, or was, my favorite game. It holds a special place in my heart with 1,800+ hours put into it but it was also a valuable lesson on spending irl money in game in the form of subscription fees, lootboxes, and how it can get expensive.. very quickly. It was a difficult lesson to learn, but I won't ever forget it.

Skyrim (490hrs), because it's Skyrim. I don't think I need to explain anymore.

Assassins Creed Odyssey (382hrs)and Origins (221hrs). I won Odyssey from here and ended up dropping more cash to purchase the complete edition and fell in love with the series, although admittingly I like them more as they are now than the 1, 2, and 3 storyline. I even bought Valhalla this summer sale, though I have yet to download it as my gaming schedule is a bit busy.

Of course, there are a lot of games I highly suggest, and pretty much everything I've played above 80 hours is an easy, easy recommendation from me with the exception of Mountain and Black Desert.

This thread isn't getting as much love as it should.

TREPANG FUCKEN 2

I've had the game for a little bit every since the Team17 bundle and I didn't really have motivation to play it, it was certainly a cool game but I had other games to play. On July 25th they released the Bladekisser DLC with some weapons and 2 new story missions. Although I didn't get the DLC yet, this motivated me to play the game and oh boy did it hit hard, just like the first time I played it. This game is the pure incarnation of a boomer shooter. The soundtrack, the visuals, the slow motion, the sound design, the story, the atmosphere, everything is so amazing. This is an indie game. This game goes so hard. I love it. Probably my favorite FPS game to date, there is just so much to love.

Pizza Tower, I'm a fan of platformers and I found PT to look way too interesting to pass up, and its so much fun to play.

This year I think....
The Gardens Between
Control
Supraland
Yakuza: Like a Dragon

Looking forward to finding and playing some of this caliber. 3 out of thr 4 were in HB Monthlies, TGB was about 2-3€ on sale

I've got around 470 hours in the Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. I'd been wanting to buy it ever since it came out since I had a lot of fun with OG Isaac, so it was well worth the price. If you count both versions I've probably got close to a thousand hours now... that's a sobering thought.
Other than that, I really enjoyed Borderlands 2 (220 hrs) and Hades (105 hrs), both great games that regularly go on sale.

I've played hundreds of hours of Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy (it's an older game, but it checks out)
... in multiplayer arena mode against a buddy of mine. There are lots of fan-made maps to be had.

Escape From Tarkov.
7234 hrs.....

View attached image.

Don't know if enough recent, but BallisticNG (2018) and Distance (also 2018), get at 6.59 € and 8.49 € respectly, having +200 hours on each, and keep playing it because of custom content and workshop.