It's time for a steamcharts thread!

[babelfisch]

Ok, I thought so. But how are these numbers relevant to anything when it's so easy (and probably even quite common) to bypass steam's ability to track these numbers?

Because you can still compare them. We aren't talking about total player numbers but about increase and decrease of player numbers. Why should the amount of people who are using Steam but launching the game with or without it suddenly drastically change? It's more likely that 10% (just a random number) of Steam users didn't use Steam to launch the game in December and the same amount of people didn't use it in November. Maybe not the same people but the percentage of people shouldn't change so much that the data becomes completely useless.

 

[babelfisch]

I never once in 3 years spent a second "looking" for high grade emission ss, and if the game is freezing every 15 mins, it's probably your rig causing issues. I've yet to freeze a single time on pc.

Some bugs are annoying, but some issues are sub par equipment being used, and sub par internet connections(or WiFi even).

The freezes happen to a lot of people (it seems like the majority of the regular forum users already reported it in various threads). It's almost certainly not rig related. Maybe you are just lucky.

 

[RexKraemer]

Ok, I thought so. But how are these numbers relevant to anything when it's so easy (and probably even quite common) to bypass steam's ability to track these numbers?

It's not possible to bypass steams counting of "concurrent players" if you play using the steam client.

And that you can play without using steam just means, that you can not tell how many people are playing right now. But this is not necessary to say that in the last days more people are playing then before 3.3 and long times before even this.

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

This only affects what friends and people see.
You still count as 1 concurrent (anonymous) player of game X in the steam numbers.

Where did you derive this info from?


And to come full circle, the original article says this, which is still uncontested:

This is exactly what SteamSpy, and incidentally, other services like SteamCharts, used for gathering the very data that formed the backbone of both services.

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

Yeah, it probably doesn't help that English isn't my first language. Makes it difficult to explain the most simple things.

LOL, and yeah, it's me who doesn't get it...

Source or settle down Beavis.

 

[babelfisch]

Where did you derive this info from?


And to come full circle, the original article says this, which is still uncontested:

I already told you that the author of the article is wrong in regards to SteamCharts. The change was related to your profile being publicly available, SteamCharts doesn't rely on your profile but on the SteamAPI. SteamSpy used to gather completely different data than SteamCharts.

Galyonkin was inspired by Steam Gauge to create Steam Spy. At the time, Galyonkin was a Senior Analyst at Wargaming.[3] Steam Spy uses the same approach of sampling a small percentage of Steam accounts, approximately 100,000 to 150,000 per day with a rolling sampling approach. The collected data is processed nightly to create visualizations used on the site, and thus offers historical trends for games as well.[4] As with Steam Gauge, Galyonkin notes that Steam Spy is subject to similar sampling errors, so that data for newly released games or for games with low sales will not likely have accurate estimates of numbers.[4] The polling approach is also prone to promotions that Valve runs, such as when a game is offered for free over a weekend; during this time, the game will appear owned on every Steam profile, and will artificially bump up the sales numbers.[4] Galyonkin's method also polls the amount of time that each profile has played a particular game, allowing him to collect estimated playtime statistics on a per-game basis.[5]

This is what your article was about. It is in no way related to the number that is gathered by SteamCharts, which comes directly from Valve, completely seperated from your Profile.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Spy

 

[RexKraemer]

Where did you derive this info from?

It is just not mentioned in this blog post. There is no reference to the steam numbers. It is only about "your friends, or the wider Steam Community". The numbers are not the wider community, they are just numbers. That you are playing now can be hidden from all others even if you are a +1 in the numbers.

And to come full circle, the original article says this, which is still uncontested:

SteamSpy (and SteamCharts) are not only about the pure number of current players. They are full of other charts and derived data, like how many of game X has been sold in the last day, weak, month, and much, much more. And a good part of these other charts are made impossible with this change. Still the pure count of players is not affected by this.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Because you can still compare them. We aren't talking about total player numbers but about increase and decrease of player numbers. Why should the amount of people who are using Steam but launching the game with or without it suddenly drastically change? It's more likely that 10% (just a random number) of Steam users didn't use Steam to launch the game in December and the same amount of people didn't use it in November. Maybe not the same people but the percentage of people shouldn't change so much that the data becomes completely useless.

Small correction: initially 100% of pc-gamers was non-steam. When it launched in steam only those who transferred manually to Steam were Steam players. More than 0%, but far below 100% obviously. Steam as a sales platform is, however, MUCH more used than FDs own store. In other words, the overwhelmingly huge majority of new players will buy ED via Steam. Non-steam players are pretty much 'legacy players'. This means that the number of non-steam players will (slowly) decrease over time, whereas the number of players via Steam can decrease or increase. So Steam becomes increasingly more representative of the PC user base as time goes on.

As for PC vs console trends; they will have similarities, and differences. For example, I cant imagine the release of RDR2 on consoles didnt have a tempory impact on console player numbers, whereas it would only potentially impact PC gamers who also have a console.

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

I already told you that the author of the article is wrong in regards to SteamCharts. The change was related to your profile being publicly available, SteamCharts doesn't rely on your profile but on the SteamAPI. SteamSpy used to gather completely different data than SteamCharts.



This is what your article was about. It is in no way related to the number that is gathered by SteamCharts, which comes directly from Valve, completely seperated from your Profile.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Spy

And again, you have not supported your claim.
That passage you quoted is unrelated to that specific claim.

 

[babelfisch]

And again, you have not supported your claim.
That passage you quoted is unrelated to that specific claim.

This comes from Valve themselves, the guys who own Steam. Are you seriously telling me that they don't know how many people are playing games published on Steam? The privacy change you are constantly referring to is about your Steam Profile being publicly available to other users. It's not about Steam not knowing what you are playing.

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

It is just not mentioned in this blog post. There is no reference to the steam numbers. It is only about "your friends, or the wider Steam Community". The numbers are not the wider community, they are just numbers. That you are playing now can be hidden from all others even if you are a +1 in the numbers.

That doesn't answer my question.

SteamSpy (and SteamCharts) are not only about the pure number of current players. They are full of other charts and derived data, like how many of game X has been sold in the last day, weak, month, and much, much more. And a good part of these other charts are made impossible with this change. Still the pure count of players is not affected by this.

Again, where do you get this information from?
Just saying "the article is wrong" doesn't cut it, sorry.

 

[RexKraemer]

Again, where do you get this information from?
Just saying "the article is wrong" doesn't cut it, sorry.

Maybe you are confuse me with babelfisch. I did not say the article is wrong, this was babelfisch.

I am just saying, that what you say, that you can hide in the steam numbers because of new privacy settings, is not in the valve blog and not in the article. It is your interpretation but it is over interpreted.

I can not prove this, I can just prove, that the opposite is unproven, and this is the truth... yeah, a silly thread, ... it's time for bed now ...

 

[babelfisch]

Maybe you are confuse me with babelfisch. I did not say the article is wrong, this was babelfisch.

I am just saying, that what you say, that you can hide in the steam numbers because of new privacy settings, is not in the valve blog and not in the article. It is your interpretation but it is over interpreted.

I can not prove this, I can just prove, that the opposite is unproven, and this is the truth... yeah, a silly thread, ... it's time for bed now ...

Just to clarify, I am not saying the article is wrong either. Just the part about SteamCharts...

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

Maybe you are confuse me with babelfisch. I did not say the article is wrong, this was babelfisch.

I am just saying, that what you say, that you can hide in the steam numbers because of new privacy settings, is not in the valve blog and not in the article. It is your interpretation but it is over interpreted.

I can not prove this, I can just prove, that the opposite is unproven, and this is the truth... yeah, a silly thread, ... it's time for bed now ...

Lol, fair enough.

I'm not suggesting you're incorrect.
It's just I've seen no evidence.

The implicit premise I find improbable is that Steam can/does publish accurate numbers, but can't share them due to that default change.

My questions are in good faith.
Using "steam charts" to mean something else when "SteamCharts" already exists is what I asked about from the get go.

 

[babelfisch]

The implicit premise I find improbable is that Steam can/does publish accurate numbers, but can't share them due to that default change.

That's not what is happening though. Steam does share accurate concurrent player numbers, that's not related to the privacy change. The privacy change is only related to how other people see your profile. It's not related to Steam knowing how many people are playing games using Steam.

The article you linked earlier is about additional data that was being pulled from our profiles, such as number of owners and playtime. SteamCharts never showed that. This data is completely different from the amount of people currently playing a game, which is a stat that Valve has access too and can and does share without breaching your privacy settings. The data shown is completely anonymous.

 

[RexKraemer]

https://store.steampowered.com/privacy_agreement/english/



5.4 We make certain data related to your Steam User Account available to other players and our partners through the Steamworks API. This information can be accessed by anyone by querying your Steam ID. At a minimum, the public persona name you have chosen to represent you on Steam and your Avatar picture are accessible this way, as well as whether you have received a ban for cheating in a multiplayer game. The accessibility of any additional info about you can be controlled through your Steam Community user profile page; data publicly available on your profile page can be accessed automatically through the Steamworks API.
In addition to the publicly available information, game developers and publishers have access to certain information from the Steamworks API directly relating to the users of the games they operate. This information includes as a minimum your ownership of the game in question. Depending on which Steamworks services are implemented in the game it may also include leaderboard information, your progress in the game, achievements you have completed, your multiplayer game matchmaking information, in-game items and other information needed to operate the game and provide support for it. For more information on what Steamworks services a specific game has implemented, please review its store page.
While we do not knowingly share Personally Identifying Information about you through the Steamworks API such as your real name or your email address, any information you share about yourself on your public Steam Profile can be accessed through the Steamworks API, including information that may make you identifiable.


The first section (I made it italics) describes what data can be affected by the "user profile page".
In addition (the next section starts with)(in addition to what you can control) publicly available as a minimum your ownership of the game.

For me this seems to be even more than just the plain numbers of how many (anonymous) players currently play game X.

So I would say, raw steam numbers of concurrent players of game X are unchanged during time and publicly available.

Good night to you all (now really).

Edit: removed quote, because all was italics

 

[StuartGT]

Yep, that the article writer didn't understand the situation.

Both SteamSpy and SteamCharts collect "concurrent players now" stats direct from Steam's public pages. You can do it yourself this very moment: go to a game's community page, and at the top is "w,xyz playing now".

What Steam's privacy changes did was stop SteamSpy from gathering "owners of this game" from each users' personal pages. SteamCharts has never recorded owners so was unaffected.

The concurrent players stat is as accurate now as it has ever been.

Do you have anything to support that claim?

It seems that privacy settings should affect that too.

To wit:

Which claim? I made four claims in that comment.

If about concurrent players data being public, why not just go look for yourself instead of asking... *shrug*:

Or read about 'Steam's privacy change affecting SteamSpy' from different, knowledgeable sources:

If you feel Steam shouldn't display how many concurrent players a game has then go suggest that to Steam. But seeing as you don't use Steam, and that they've been providing said data since 2010, they'll likely ignore you.

 

[StuartGT]

I wonder, have any of those who were comparing NMS players vs Elite players, just after the Next update, based on steam charts already posted?

Look how 1 guy and his dog put the 100s of developers from Frontier to shame!

You know .... those guys?

No idea, but earlier in this very thread (comment #43) I posted this:

One thing to look at is that NMS's spike lasted for about a month (roughly June 25-July 30th) before settling down to a much lower (though higher than pre-update) level.

While I agree with much of your post, where does this "June 25th" come from? NMS's Next launched on 24th July.

Here's some graphs and data

NMS' spike, which began on 24th July (launchday of Next update):

The peak of 97.7k is on 29th July. Sixteen days later (14th Aug) player peaks had dropped by 70% to 29,143.

Elite's player spike is nowhere near as dramatic, but we're around 20 days into it.

Elite's spike began on 12th Dec (day after 3.3's unstable-servers launch):

The peak of 13,832 was on 16th Dec. As you say: twenty days later (today) player peaks have dropped by 9% to 12,588.

I'll be interested to see if the uptick holds over time, or if it drops back down again, and if it drops back down, whether it goes all the way down to pre-patch levels or settles at a new, higher plateau. If the long term result of the patch is a sustained net increase in player activity then I'd call that a win. Also worth noting that last year Elite had an uptick during roughly the same period by roughly the same amount. It held until around April and dropped to some of the lowest monthly player numbers we've seen since launch. So uh I guess we'll see.

Fully agree - every January since launch has seen higher Steam monthly averages

Edit: i've changed the graphs to be the same 1-month timeframe.

 

[Kaocraft]

Because it's what statistical data suggests. Do you know when the most sales for any given game happen? At release, when the price is highest. From there on sales become less and less, which is the reason we have discounts in the first place.

That’s fine but we’re not strictly talking about total ownership we’re talking about active players right now. The majority of game owners aren’t playing their game right now and in fact the longer you’ve owned a game the less likely you are to be playing it. The question at hand is whether selling the game at a deep discount might have contributed substantially to the spike in active player numbers. Or, to put it another way: is the high activity mostly new players or mostly old players who came back? It’s almost certainly a mix of both but unless I’m misunderstanding you seem to think the activity spike is mostly old players who came back due to the patch and that the sale is unlikely to have had any substantial impact?

 

[StuartGT]

The data is tainted from the time of that change forward.
That's all.
It's without question to me.
No one has provided a shred of counter-evidence.

Wrong.