The reasoning was that these numbers could be cross-referenced with chart positions to reveal numbers for other games that had not been disclosed by their developers. Valve eventually changed the terms of service for developers on its platform, prohibiting publication of exact figures in the manner Doucet had been sharing them. Unfortunately, Doucet was forced to stop publishing numbers for his games. "I've seen people remark that sales stats aren't useful for anything other than curiosity or voyeurism," said Doucet, "but as we've been seeing, it's made a material difference in many developers' lives, especially when it helped them secure funding without which they couldn't have made their games at all." In response, multiple developers reached out to tell him how much that info helped them as a reference point in pitches to get their own games funded.
In 2012 (before Steam Spy existed) he published a blog post that included sales stats for his recent release, Defender's Quest, as well as other data. Like Galyonkin, developer Lars Doucet has seen firsthand how numbers, imperfect though they may be, can help small developers. "I also see developers looking into what languages to add first, what markets to focus on, and checking which similar games to play to understand what works and what does not." "In my experience developers are using Steam Spy mostly for comps, to prove their idea for a new game has a chance of succeeding because there were other similar games before," Galyonkin said. In fact, as a small developer himself, that audience was precisely why Galyonkin created Steam Spy in the first place.
#RENAINE SWITCH FOR FREE#
Publishers and developers with enough money to pay for the kind of data Steam Spy provided for free would once again be able to race ahead of small teams who had found the playing field leveled by the service. " made a material difference in many developers' lives, especially when it helped them secure funding without which they couldn't have made their games at all" Lars Doucet Galyonkin said in an interview with after the site closed in April that he had seen it coming, but that the removal of Steam Spy was a restoration of the information asymmetry that once allowed those who had access to metrics to abuse that power against those who did not. The blow to Steam Spy wasn't so much an affront to its creator, Sergey Galyonkin, as it was to the community of developers that relies on the data it presented. But what that tool might be and whether it would provide equitable or better data than Steam Spy is still a mystery. Since then, Valve representatives have commented on Steam Spy, citing concerns about its accuracy and going so far as to mention that Valve had some other tool in the works to replace it.
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It has since returned, though with its accuracy further reduced and the looming threat of Valve shutting the service down via another update at any time. In April, an update to the Steam web API affected the way Steam Spy pulled data from the platform, forcing the service to temporarily shut down. Steam Spy launched in 2015, offering data that covered copies sold, users, average review scores, and plenty of other metrics, with a surprising if imperfect degree of accuracy. The industry snapshot that Steam Spy provided was illuminating, but for small developers and the publishers who work with them, its data often meant the difference between a scrapped project and a successful release. In recent weeks it has become clear that Valve does not intend to let Steam Spy continue publishing Steam game sales data estimates unimpeded, leaving an information void that the company may fill itself.eventually.
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