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Steam Spy creator Sergey Galyonkin opens up about how Valve’s changes interfered with how his third-party sales tracker worked before and how he’s trying to keep the tool alive.

Alissa McAloon, Publisher

April 27, 2018

1 Min Read

Steam Spy creator Sergey Galyonkin has opened up about how Valve’s recent changes to Steam interfered with his unofficial Steam sales tracker, noting in a Medium post that he’s working on getting everything up and running again despite the setback. 

In its previous form, Steam Spy was be a useful tool for developers looking get a read on trends in video game markets, so the return of the service could stand to once again give developers an information boost.

Right now, Galyonkin says he has brought Steam Spy back online in a limited capacity. Following a second change to the Steam API and hundreds of emails to developers, he says he decided to set the new algorithm powering the utility live and get basic features like the ownership ranges, playtime distribution, and related games up and running once again. 

But he notes that, in this new form, Steam Spy is by no means as accurate as its earlier version. Galyonkin says that the margin of error is within 10 percent for a good chunk of the games he has verifiable data for, but that he’s spotted some “crazy outliers” as well.

Galyonkin's full post has more details on the issues Steam Spy encountered when Valve switched things up and a full explanation of what's different between the old and new utility.

About the Author(s)

Alissa McAloon

Publisher, GameDeveloper.com

As the Publisher of Game Developer, Alissa McAloon brings a decade of experience in the video game industry and media. When not working in the world of B2B game journalism, Alissa enjoys spending her time in the worlds of immersive sandbox games or dabbling in the occasional TTRPG.

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