![]() As detailed on the Steam Developer Wiki, every individual user on Steam gets a unique 64-bit SteamID that can be converted algorithmically to a 17-digit decimal number, starting at 76561197960265729 and going up sequentially from there. They can also be brought up using a unique, usually hidden identifier known as a Steam Community ID number. This page also lists how many hours they’ve played for each of those titles ( here’s mine if you have a desire to see my pile of shame for some reason).Ĭrucially, for our purposes, these profile pages don’t even require a specific username (e.g. ![]() Prominent on each of these public pages, again just a click away, is a list of every game that Steam users have registered to their accounts. ![]() The core of our data comes from the individual profile pages on Valve’s social portal, such as this one for yours truly. ![]() How we did itĪs it happens, all the data needed to track sales figures on Steam was hiding in plain sight. But first, let’s discuss where our numbers actually come from as well as the strengths and limitations of our approach. Today, we’re going to start sharing that data with you. The result is a wide-ranging survey of a service that estimates suggest represents 70 to 75 percent of the current PC gaming market in the US. The information we’ve collected over the past few months includes not only sales estimates for every game on Steam, but also data on how many hours Steam users have spent time playing those games. Sites like VGChartz have tried to solve this problem by generating their own wide-ranging video game sales estimates, but there are some well-documented issues with their data collection methods and reporting.įurther Reading Steam Gauge: Addressing your questions and concernsWe've come up with what we believe is a much more robust way of estimating sales and player data based on publicly available information, at least when it comes to games specifically on Valve’s Steam download service. In the realm of video games, on the other hand, we’re usually at the mercy of occasional leaks or publishers that will sometimes (but not always) announce when they’ve passed a big round sales number milestone. This is in stark contrast to movies, music, and TV, where organizations like Billboard, Nielsen, or even the movie studios themselves regularly release robust sales and performance data data that forms the basis for massive analytical web sites. Steam, to its credit, offers real-time and “daily peak” snapshots of how many players use its 100 most popular games, but these numbers can be transitory and don’t reflect total sales or play time very well. Those with deep pockets can pay for access to a treasure trove of historic and current sales numbers, but subscribers are contractually forbidden from sharing those numbers with the public. Sure, we get a monthly “Top 10” list of best-selling titles in the US from tracking firm NPD, but these results smash together myriad versions of multi-platform releases and don’t even contain specific sales numbers these days (foreign services like Britain’s Chart-Track and Japan’s Media Create are slightly more robust in their public reporting). It's the kind of data that the public almost never gets access to in the video game industry. These estimates are based on publicly available information described in much more detail below. I can tell you that Steam users tend to put nearly 600 percent more time into the multiplayer mode on Modern Warfare 2 than the single player mode.īasically, I can give you an idea of how any of the thousands of games on Steam have performed, both in terms of sales and gameplay hours. I can tell you that Steam users have put an aggregate of about 3.8 billion hours into Dota 2. Right now, I can tell you that about 37 percent of the roughly 781 million games registered to various Steam accounts haven’t even been loaded a single time. Steam Spy gives daily, public estimates of Steam sales data.Steam Gauge: Measuring the value of the Steam Summer Sale.Steam Gauge: What VR games are popular with HTC Vive’s early adopters.Steam Spy announces it’s shutting down, blames Valve’s new privacy settings.Valve working on “more accurate” replacement for Steam Spy’s sales data.Aurich Lawson reader comments 219 with Steam Gauge
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