In an industry notorious for how well its own products perform, we love some really good, crisp data. And with today’s Steam Stats overhaul, Valve gives us just that.
It’s now called Steam Charts, replacing Steam Stats, and like the old version, it still shows the most popular games on the platform. But unlike stats, Charts has the tools to figure out what drives that popularity.
For context, the old stats site mostly focused on top games by moment-to-moment player count, with Valve regularly providing separate bestseller lists by genre and other factors. Charts brings all of this together in one place.
The main page shows the current best selling games on Steam as well as the most played games moment by moment by player count. There are also lists of the current total best selling games and weekly top sellers by revenue, with an indication of weekly changes in the table, how many weeks a game has been out, how much it costs and whether or not it’s on sale.
You can also sort the charts by region for regional bestsellers. All of this is done through revenue, so free-to-play games are included with microtransactions, and extra bits like DLC and season passes are accounted for.
Unfortunately, the monthly top release hearts are still randomly ordered overall, making it harder to pinpoint the best-selling games from month to month.
While you might not care much if you’re not a numbers nut (like me, sorry), the real benefit of better data is that people who are can watch game sales trends with a little more accuracy and draw useful conclusions from them.
It’s helpful for people who make and publish games to see what’s doing well and what’s not, and maybe allows them to fund games and genres they might not have planned before. It can help content creators see what people are playing and find cool, surprising games that might not get the attention they deserve on sites like this.