What the library statuses mean

Every game on your shelf carries one status. Most of them are just labels for you; two of them do something.

Status	What it says
Playing	In it right now. Shows on your profile.
Replaying	In it again, having finished it before. Counts as playing, and keeps score.
Played	Been in it. Not finished, not abandoned.
Backlog	Owned, not started. This is what the Backlog Advisor reads.
Completed	Finished. Pays 50 Bounty and 15 XP, once per game, ever.
Wishlist	Not owned. Gets you a reminder when it comes out.
Dropped	Given up on. No judgement; it keeps the backlog honest.

Replaying, and how many times

Some games you finish more than once. Replaying is for that: it says you are in it right now without pretending you have never finished it, which is what Playing would have claimed and what leaving it on Completed would have hidden.

The shelf keeps count. Finish a replay and the card says Finished 3×; start another and it says 4th playthrough. Your first finish is not a "1×" — one time is just finished.

Three things worth knowing:

• A replay counts as playing. It shows in your Playing count, on your profile, and in the Playing filter — because you are playing it. Choosing Replaying in the filter narrows to just those.
• The date you first finished it does not move. Starting a replay resets the progress bar, since a run that opens at 100% has nowhere to go, but the day you first finished it stays as it was.
• It pays nothing. Completing a game pays 50 Bounty and 15 XP once per game, ever — a second lap is for you, not for the ledger.

Completed pays exactly once

Marking a game Completed pays the first time and never again — not by moving it away and back, and not by removing it from your shelf and adding it again. The payment is remembered against the game, not against the row on your shelf.

Wishlist is the useful one

Anything on your wishlist with a release date ahead of it puts a reminder in the queue. It is the one status that makes the site do something for you later.

A sync can move a status, in two cases

Worth knowing, because both surprise people who find a game somewhere they did not put it.

• Off the backlog. If a game is in your Backlog and the platform reports that you have actually played it, it moves to Playing if that was recent and Played if it was not. A backlog is a list of things you have not started, so a game you have started does not belong on it.
• To Completed. If the platform reports every achievement or trophy earned, the game moves to Completed. That is the closest thing Steam, Xbox and PlayStation have to "I finished this".

What a sync never touches

Completed, Dropped and Wishlist stay where you put them. Nothing a platform reports will move a game out of those three, so a game you abandoned stays abandoned even if you load it once, and a game you marked finished is not un-finished by anything.