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Thread: Valve Joins 2018, Kills Steam Spy

  1. Valve Joins 2018, Kills Steam Spy

    I give up on people. Steam Spy is dead because Valve finally is introducing privacy settings and people are flipping out. I'm trying to figure out how inaccurate data is worth a loss of privacy and it's just not working.

    News Flash- People are dumb.

    On the plus side, it looks like the new features that have been released and others on the way are going to finally add much-needed options to how the service is used. It's years late but nice to see.
    Last edited by James; 11 Apr 2018 at 12:23 AM.

  2. #2
    Sorry for being out of the loop but this is really vague. Can you explain steam spy briefly, what changed?

    Also, 'new features' and 'much-needed options' is really non-informative. Is this linked to the above change? Can you elaborate or link to a decent article?
    John / JohnNiner / Niner

  3. Publicly-queryable game sales data was a big use case for it.
    Last edited by Joust Williams; 11 Apr 2018 at 02:16 PM.

  4. To echo Darmonde, I appreciate you creating a thread, James. But I'm way out of the loop. What is this thread about? I feel like I've read comment number 30 from some other news thread.
    Can you explain what Steam Spy is/was?
    What is Valve doing regarding privacy settings to prompt this news? How does it affect Steam Spy's definition?
    It seems that public reaction prompted this thread. Can you show us any reactions in particular that we should be aware of?
    What has Valve changed that you approve of, and how does it bring you value?
    Why are you reading this? go to your general settings and uncheck the Show Signatures box already!

  5. Your Steam library and play time stats are now private by default, which makes Steam Spy, which aggregates those stats, even less accurate than it was before.
    I honestly don't know why that info would matter to anyone other than publishers themselves, but then I don't understand any of the superfluous crap surrounding Steam to begin with.

  6. Quote Originally Posted by Joust Williams View Post
    Publically-queryable game sales data was a big use case for it.
    I've been into videogames since before I knew how to read. I've only ever felt like I'm in a conversation about them in which I have absolutely no idea what's going on twice: reading a Kingdom Hearts wiki and right now.

  7. Quote Originally Posted by A Robot Bit Me View Post
    I've been into videogames since before I knew how to read. I've only ever felt like I'm in a conversation about them in which I have absolutely no idea what's going on twice: reading a Kingdom Hearts wiki and right now.
    No one knows what Kingdom Hearts is about and anyone who tells you they do is a liar.

  8. Quote Originally Posted by kedawa View Post
    Your Steam library and play time stats are now private by default, which makes Steam Spy, which aggregates those stats, even less accurate than it was before.
    I honestly don't know why that info would matter to anyone other than publishers themselves, but then I don't understand any of the superfluous crap surrounding Steam to begin with.
    Uh, I kind if understand why that info might be voluntarily shared in a social media context, but in what situation would you post your customers' personally identifiable purchase history for the world to see, and people would be okay with that? Gamers sure are different.
    Why are you reading this? go to your general settings and uncheck the Show Signatures box already!

  9. Ack, sorry! I'd have put far more detail into the first post if I'd realized. Basically Steam Spy is big among the kids and Gamer Consumer Rights crowd because it scrapes publicly available data off Steam to come up with sales numbers for each game, give or take a certain amount. How much that amount is varies from game to game, but people enjoyed the dick-measuring contest of knowing the game they like sold well, or feeling special because they're one of the few who bought Underappreciated Gem 2017, or groaning at Anime Waifu Porn's ridiculous pandering being successful. With Valve updating the site and setting everything to private Steam Spy is dead, and to be fair it had some uses. You could take that data and make a case to a company that their games were worth the effort of porting to PC, and from what I'm given to understand (purely anecdotally) that's a big part of the reason so much of the Japanese gaming output has moved off its former console-only status.

  10. Thanks face(palm)book

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