{"id":29574,"date":"2018-06-29T19:52:00","date_gmt":"2018-06-29T19:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/321096"},"modified":"2018-06-29T19:52:00","modified_gmt":"2018-06-29T19:52:00","slug":"valve-is-working-on-its-own-more-accurate-and-more-useful-steam-spy-like-tools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/06\/29\/valve-is-working-on-its-own-more-accurate-and-more-useful-steam-spy-like-tools\/","title":{"rendered":"Valve is working on its own &#8216;more accurate and more useful&#8217; Steam Spy-like tools"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Steam Spy has been, up until recent privacy changes rendered the service\u00a0unreliable, a useful tool in some cases for developers to keep an eye on the ebb and flow of digital sales on Steam, but Valve wants to offer developers \u201csomething better.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Speaking at White Nights in St. Petersburg this past week, Valve\u2019s head of business development Jan-Peter Ewert <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/GamesCodeDogs\/status\/1012265304771252224\">addressed the topic in response to a question<\/a> from indie dev Michael Kuzmin about Valve\u2019s take on Steam Spy\u2019s utility.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In short, Ewert notes that Valve is \u201cworking on new tools and new ways of getting data out of Steam\u201d and hopes that the data provided by the company\u2019s own tools \u201ccan be more accurate and more useful than what Steam Spy previously offered\u201d developers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur general approach has always been to provide open APIs so that when we don&#8217;t offer the amount of tools that we should, the community can step in,\u201d explains Ewert. Steam Spy filled this gap originally until privacy changes on Valve\u2019s end prevented the third-party tool from gathering the data it used to make its estimations.<\/p>\n<p>Steam Spy was taken offline following those changes at first, and was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/317205\/Steam_Spy_isnt_dead_but_its_not_back_at_100_yet_either.php\">later brought back online<\/a>, albeit in a less accurate form and with a different algorithm at its sails. But even the original incarnation of Steam Spy left some things to be desired, as Ewert points out, since the service \u201chad a broad variance in how accurate it was,\u201d with that accuracy differing from game to game.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So, to be clear, we don&#8217;t have a business selling iPhones,\u201d said Ewert, explaining why both developers and Valve benefits from analytical tools in the vein of Steam Spy. \u201cThe only way we make money is if you make good decisions in bringing the right games to the platform, and finding your audience.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Steam Spy has been, up until recent privacy changes rendered the service\u00a0unreliable, a useful tool in some cases for developers to keep an eye on the ebb and flow of digital sales on Steam, but Valve wants to offer developers \u201csomething better.\u201d Speaking at White Nights in St. Petersburg this past week, Valve\u2019s head of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29575,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29574\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}