Steam Spy Revived Though Valve Ignored Creator’s Proposal

Steam Spy is back from the dead after more than 200 game developers urged its creator to revive the Steam analytics tool. However, due to some privacy settings changes that Valve implemented, Steam Spy is only capable of presenting less reliable data.

On Friday, Steam Spy creator Sergey Galyonkin wrote a blog post explaining what happened to the analytics tool and the difference between the new version and the old one. First off, Galyonkin tackled how Steam’s new rules affected Steam Spy. “On 11th of April, Valve has made changes to their Steam Web API, removing owned games from user’s information, unless they actively opt-in,” he said.

Apparently, with the new changes in place, Steam Spy could no longer poll user information through the Steam Web API. In addition, because Steam also applied changes to its Store API, it became difficult for the third-party tool to collect basic information about games available on Steam.

Galyonkin also called out multiple sites for reporting that the analytics tool was dead, even though he was just busy creating a new algorithm for the site to make it work. “Naturally, the old algorithm stopped working, and while I was busy creating a new one, some press rushed to pronounce the site dead,” he wrote.

Galyonkin also pointed out in his blog post that he did notify Valve about his predicament, but he got nothing in return. “I wrote a proposal to Valve that would still let Steam Spy run using the old algorithm without exposing any personal data. I’ve got a confirmation from Tom Giardino that they’ve received my message, but that was it,” Galyonkin noted.

Thankfully, Galyonkin listened to the comments that more than 200 game developers shared with him. The developers said that Steam Spy had a positive impact on their operations, and this has led the creator of the tool to bring it back and update the system despite some restrictions.

The new Steam Spy uses a machine learning model to measure sales numbers based on “coincidental data.” Galyonkin admitted though that most of the data on games does not really come from Steam, but then the system works as per the tests he conducted. He cited how the new algorithm estimated that “Frostpunk” sold around 252,000 copies, and the estimate was pretty close to the 250,000 copies sold according to the developers of the survival game.

The revived Steam Spy lacks a number of the tool’s original features. However, it will still be useful to those who want to know key stats like sales numbers and playtime. Galyonkin warns though that the website is less accurate than before because it has a 10 percent margin of error and “some crazy outliers.” He vows to improve the tool’s predictions moving forward, and he is also working to bring back some of the missing features.