Game servers shut down and a thousand hours of progress vanishes. Put some of your hours into things no company can switch off.

Progress inside somebody else’s system lives on their terms. The hours were not wasted, since you had fun and probably picked up something about patience and working with people, but the account itself can disappear by press release. Anything stored only on a company’s machine is borrowed.

Keep playing, and also put some hours into things that cannot be switched off. A skill sits in your hands, a language sits in your head, a friendship sits in another person. Take one thing you spend time on and ask where the result actually lives. If the answer is a server, add something this week that lives in you.