A new study analysing over half a million Steam reviews has found that players who log the most hours with a game are often the ones most likely to leave negative reviews, undermining the idea that review scores reliably reflect user satisfaction. Researchers Chetan Mudlapur and Om Prakash Singh of the Indian Institute of Information Technology suggest this "paradox" is partly driven by the sunk cost fallacy, as long-term players who have invested heavily in a game struggle to walk away even when they grow dissatisfied with it.

The study found reviews from players with 0-2 hours of playtime were mostly negative, likely reflecting Steam's two-hour refund window, while those with 2-200 hours were "consistently positive." Beyond 200 hours, negative reviews rose sharply, particularly for live-service, strategy, fighting and open-ended survival games, with War Thunder showing the strongest such pattern. By contrast, soulslike, JRPG and indie titles, which tend to be story-driven with clear endings, showed the lowest rates of this effect, as unhappy players there were more likely to simply quit early rather than keep playing for hundreds of hours.