As you’ve probably heard, Steam Spy is terminating it’s operation due to a change in the Steam privacy policy (In case you missed it, please check this article on Gamesindustry.biz).

Without Steam Spy, we are left with paid data services. Don’t get me wrong, those companies spend a lot of time and resources to gather information and charging for it’s services is fair. However, most indie developers don’t have budget to buy information.

To resolve this I’ve come up with a simple, but perhaps useful idea in which developers share their data on  a monthly basis. How it works:

• You get a monthly email with a link to a Google form
• For each titel you fill out some basic information, such as title, platform, units sold (lifetime), price, etc (final data TBD)
• All this information is available in an online Google Spreadsheet

This only provides people with very basic information, but in a data void it’s probably better than nothing at all.

If you are interested in participating or if you have any feedback, please use this Google Form.

FAQ

 

If people have to fill out their own numbers, they can cheat, right?

Sure, but in the Steam Spy system you can also do this by giving away free keys. Plus, it’s probably not too hard to spot anomalies.

Will the list be publicly available?

Not sure yet, depends on the feedback of the companies providing the sales numbers. It could also be the case that only contributors get access.

There will only be new data once a month, why?

Because having to fill out a form once a month manually is often enough. And it’s easier to combine with monthly sales reports. It could even become once every quarter. All depends on the feedback of contributors.

Is this a long term solution?

Maybe, maybe not. If someone has a better or automated idea and this is no longer necessary, we’ll disappear again.

Why do you do this?

Because I see a problem for the indie dev community and want to help to find a solution.

How can I submit an idea/feedback or sign up to contribute ?

Please use this Google Form for this.