Gamers Compare Their Playtime to Liz Truss's 44 Days as UK Prime Minister

Liz Truss resignation, UK Prime Minister, became a viral gaming benchmark as players compared playtime to her record-short 44-day tenure.

In October 2022, Liz Truss resigned as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom after only 44 days in office. It was a political implosion so rapid that it quickly stopped being just a news story and became a unit of measurement. Her time at Number 10 was so brief that people began comparing it to the hours they had sunk into video games—and the results said something both hilarious and a little damning.

The Shortest Premiership in British History

Truss came to power just two days before the death of Queen Elizabeth II. She took the job from Boris Johnson, a man whose own party had forced him out after he became so widely disliked that almost anyone looked like an improvement. That honeymoon did not last long.

Although the country was already dealing with an energy crisis and a cost-of-living emergency, Truss decided the best way to handle things was to add a financial crisis into the mix. Her government proposed a budget that spent billions on tax cuts for the wealthy. The markets went into freefall, and the pound sank. Within weeks, she had acquired the same kind of public disgust that had ended her predecessor's career. With Truss gone, the Conservative Party began searching for yet another replacement—and some even wondered whether they might bring back the very man they had just thrown out.

Beyond the political chaos, Truss's 44-day tenure made her the shortest-serving Prime Minister in British history. It was so short that Sea of Thieves streamer Captain Daggers McTerrors calculated it at around 1,056 hours. Then he turned it into a brilliant gaming challenge: 'Name a game you've spent longer playing in hours than Liz Truss has spent being PM.'

A Streamer's Genius Benchmark

McTerrors offered his own list first. He pointed to Sea of Thieves, Ark Survival Evolved, Skyrim, and the then-recent survival hit Grounded as games that had consumed more of his life than Truss had spent running the country. That simple question opened the floodgates.

James Troughton, a writer, revealed he had put over 1,700 hours into The Elder Scrolls Online. Others joined in with their own towering playtimes. One player noted they had beaten Truss's tenure in Borderlands 2, Destiny 2, Warframe, and—if the entire franchise were combined—the MechWarrior series.

A Community Responds with Thousands of Hours

The replies filled up with games that can easily devour months of a person's life. Europa Universalis 3, Stellaris, Civilization, Final Fantasy 14, Skyrim, Minecraft, Monster Hunter World, The Sims, World of Warcraft, Fallout 4, Left 4 Dead, Dragon Age, Starcraft 2, Elite Dangerous, and Diablo 2 all appeared. Each one represented a world where players had spent more time managing resources, building alliances, or simply grinding than Truss had spent in Downing Street.

Game	Why It Feels Like an Unfair Comparison
Civilization	Players routinely spend 1,000+ hours learning how to run an empire
World of Warcraft	Entire calendars disappear into raids and reputation grinds
Final Fantasy 14	Main story alone can pass the 1,056-hour mark for completionists
The Sims	God-level household management becomes a full-time hobby
Stellaris	Galactic strategy demands patience that outlasts a premiership

Could a Game Teach Better Leadership?

Here is the real question: would any of these games have trained a better Prime Minister? A Civilization player understands that you cannot ignore your economy while showering tax cuts on the wealthy. A Stellaris strategist knows that sudden, reckless policy shifts can cause entire systems to rebel. Even a Monster Hunter World player understands that preparation matters more than blind confidence.

Truss's 1,056 hours in office have become a strange cultural benchmark. Even in 2026, the comparison still circulates in gaming circles because it is so easy to grasp. Most dedicated players have poured far more time into a single virtual world than Truss spent leading a real one. The meme works because it is absurd, but also because it stings.

So the next time someone checks their Steam library and sees a four-digit hour count, they might ask themselves a new question: have I just outlasted a British Prime Minister? For many gamers, the answer is yes—and they did it without crashing an economy.