A Steam user with 29,926.3 hours logged in Cities: Skylines posted a negative review on April 11, 2026, calling the city builder the "BY FAR most frustrating, enraging game of my entire life." The review surfaced on Reddit's r/Steam, where users immediately started calculating what that playtime actually means.
What 30,000 hours actually looks like
Breaking it down: 29,926 hours over the 11 years since Cities: Skylines launched equals roughly 7.5 hours every single day. That is a full-time job by any definition. The reviewer also clocked 68.3 hours in the two weeks before posting, proving this is not someone who binged the game in 2015 and left the launcher open. They are still actively playing.
For context, a player with 1,000 hours in a game qualifies as a serious fan. At 30,000 hours, you are operating in a tier that barely exists.
Steam's hour tracker counts how long the game client stays open, not necessarily active gameplay. A significant portion of those hours likely came from idling or overnight sessions. But even if 75% of that time was AFK, that still leaves over 7,000 hours of actual play. The number defies reason either way.
The review itself
The full text of the negative review reads:
"Constant updates break the entire game if it's modded. And it MUST be modded because the vanilla version is so lame it's unbearable. Paradox seems fixated on pastel cartoonish colors and buildings that look ubsurdly rediculous. The constant breaking with updates has made this the BY FAR most frustrating, enraging game of my entire life."
The complaint targets a specific problem: Cities: Skylines, published by Paradox Interactive, becomes unplayable in its base state for players who demand depth. The modding community has spent years patching the gaps vanilla leaves behind, delivering realistic assets, traffic systems, and visual overhauls that transform the game into something far more detailed. The issue is that every Paradox update breaks mods. For someone who has built their entire experience around a heavily modded setup, that cycle of breakage and repair becomes genuinely maddening over years.
Mod-heavy Cities: Skylines setup
The modding dependency problem
Most players do not realize how drastically the Cities: Skylines experience splits between vanilla and modded. The base game works but feels limited. The modded version, built on years of community contributions through platforms like the Steam Workshop, is an entirely different product. Road-building tools, traffic management mods, and visual asset packs have collectively made Cities: Skylines one of the deepest city builders available.
The cost is constant maintenance. Modded saves are fragile. A single patch from Paradox can destroy compatibility for dozens of mods at once, rendering a carefully constructed city unloadable until mod authors release fixes. For a casual player, that registers as a minor annoyance. For someone who has spent the equivalent of three and a half years of working hours inside this game, it becomes a recurring disaster.
The irony is obvious to anyone following the Cities: Skylines franchise. The original game remains the genre standard, while Cities: Skylines 2, which launched in 2023, had a disastrous release and has failed to match its predecessor. The person who left this review was clearly playing the original, not the sequel, which eliminates any confusion between the two.
The love-hate loop that keeps players coming back
Certain games do this to people. Cities: Skylines is one of them. The loop pulls you back even when it makes you want to launch your keyboard through a window. The reviewer did not quit. They logged 68.3 hours in the last two weeks and then posted a negative review. That is not someone who gave up. That is someone who keeps showing up, still frustrated, still unable to walk away.
For anyone considering the city builder genre or comparing it to other simulation games, browse more guides and reviews to find what fits your playstyle before committing the next three years of your life to a modded road network.
The Reddit thread that surfaced the review has drawn hundreds of comments from players sharing their own complicated relationships with Cities: Skylines, with many confirming that the mod-breaking update cycle remains a genuine and long-standing pain point for the community. The reviewer is not alone in the frustration. They just have the playtime to prove they earned the right to complain.
