Steam Spy creator Sergey Galyonkin has opened up about how Valve’s recent changes to Steam interfered with his unofficial Steam sales tracker, noting in a Medium post that he’s working on getting everything up and running again despite the setback.
In its previous form, Steam Spy was be a useful tool for developers looking get a read on trends in video game markets, so the return of the service could stand to once again give developers an information boost.
Right now, Galyonkin says he has brought Steam Spy back online in a limited capacity. Following a second change to the Steam API and hundreds of emails to developers, he says he decided to set the new algorithm powering the utility live and get basic features like the ownership ranges, playtime distribution, and related games up and running once again.
But he notes that, in this new form, Steam Spy is by no means as accurate as its earlier version. Galyonkin says that the margin of error is within 10 percent for a good chunk of the games he has verifiable data for, but that he’s spotted some “crazy outliers” as well.
Galyonkin’s full post has more details on the issues Steam Spy encountered when Valve switched things up and a full explanation of what’s different between the old and new utility.