Steam Spy Returns With Modified Stat Generation Method

The Steam Spy service returns after a short break. Instead of using data from the Steam API, a machine learning algorithm is now used to predict game sales. For now, Steam Spy is not very reliable yet.

In a blog post, Steam Spy founder Sergey Galyonkin explains what has happened to his statistics website lately. Because Steam Spy can no longer use the api to generate statistics, an alternative had to be invented, something the founder hadn’t got around to until now due to his workload.

Galyonkin has now found a way to generate statistics for Steam games with machine learning. The necessary algorithm already works and is fed by large amounts of data, but not all functions of Steam Spy have been made available again yet. This will be worked on in the near future, according to Galyonkin.

For now, the new version of the statistics website is not very reliable, Galyonkin admits. In some games, the prediction is close to the actual number of sales, but in other cases the prediction is far off. In the coming period, improvements need to be made to improve the underlying machine learning algorithm.

On April 11, it turned out that Steam Spy suddenly stopped working because Valve had modified Steam’s privacy settings. This meant, among other things, that data about purchased games will no longer be made public by default, causing Steam Spy to lose its main source of information.