Start an attributable game session
- Sign in to Vihar before launching a direct-play community game from its listing, or sign in with Vihar ID on an account game's own website.
- Start actual gameplay. The game's tracker starts a session and reports elapsed active time.
- Return to Dashboard → Inside your community games to see per-game play time, session totals and recent play dates.
- Use the calendar for daily session counts. Dates use UTC, so late-night local play can fall on the previous UTC day.
Game opens and play sessions are different
A game open means you launched a website or download page from Vihar while signed in. It appears in the existing game-open history. It does not prove the game loaded, a download completed or a round was played.
A connected play session begins when the game calls the tracking API. Its play time is the sum of accepted recent elapsed intervals. Website opens and game sessions are displayed separately so one click is not counted twice as gameplay. Multiple rounds can produce several sessions from one website open.
What counts toward recorded time
The SDK reports every 15 seconds, pauses accumulation while the tab is hidden, and supports the game's pause/resume controls. The server bounds each report by actual elapsed server time, deduplicates sequence numbers and prevents overlapping active sessions for the same player and game.
Recorded time is an estimate supplied by the connected game, not proof of attention or an anti-cheat score. The studio must wire its pause/menu events correctly. Idle time in a visible game can count if that game does not detect inactivity.
Why activity can be missing
Guest play, earlier play before integration, offline gameplay and games without a working tracker cannot be reconstructed. A no-login game opened directly from a bookmark needs a previously active tab connection or a new signed-in launch from Vihar to record personal activity.
Closing a tab or losing the network can drop the last interval. Reports after a gap longer than 90 seconds add no time for that gap. Try another launch if a session expires, and wait 90 seconds if an abandoned tab still appears active. Owner integration tests are excluded from player statistics.
Legacy official-game statistics remain separate from the new community tracker. Do not assume an official game's play-time reporting is available merely because it has a Vihar listing.