4 ms·

It's unsurprising this was patched out shortly after being made public. Despite the truncated rounding, the technique could probably still be valuable. Sampling

by hhmc 8y ago

It's unsurprising this was patched out shortly after being made public. Despite the truncated rounding, the technique could probably still be valuable. Sampling multiple points in time, then analyzing the common multiples each time point yields to give a likely range. This requires that the achievement percentages vary with time (which could be a flawed assumption).

AznHisoka 8y ago
Why would they patch it? In other words why would people knowing the sales number of games hurt them?
- vermilingua 8y ago
  “Why would it hurt them” and “Why can’t Valve leak potentially sensitive financial details of their partners/clients” are two ways of wording the same question here.
- shoo 8y ago
  it lets people accurately estimate sales / revenue of businesses, or market demand. that's valuable information that game developers / publishers / steams might not want to share by default without getting something valuable in return.
  - AznHisoka 8y ago
    Isnt Amazon doing a similar thing by showing the Sales rank of a product then? And Twitter recently now lets you see the ads for any company/competitor as well. its not sales figures but its still competitor intelligence.
    - dalore 8y ago
      In those cases the companies chose to expose that information as it helps sellers and drivers competition amongst the competitors.
      - AznHisoka 8y ago
        How do I then remove my Sales rank from being being displayed? I sell a few products there and I never chose to expose that rank to anyone.
        ikeboy 8y ago
        Switch to a category that doesn't have ranks, rare but some products don't have it. If you're one of the top 10k products within a main category Amazon will release it in their public data anyway though.
- CamTin 8y ago
  They must have reasons for not wanting this figure to be public. If they didn't, they would just expose it directly via the API or in the UI instead of making people solve a fun math puzzle to tease it out of other figures.
  - derefr 8y ago
    If they're the only one with the dataset, they can sell that dataset to publishers. If someone else scrapes the dataset from them, though, then that person or organization can then also sell it to publishers, reducing its market value when Valve goes to sell it. This is the same reason LinkedIn makes it so hard to scrape their graph.
    - CamTin 8y ago
      Sure, that's one possible reason. Whatever their actual motivations, one thing that we know for sure is that the don't want this data out there. Therefore it should be no surprise that they dull the accuracy on achievements as soon as it is reported that this can be used to divine the numbers. There's not a logically-consistent position Valve could have where they both a) don't want to provide the data directly, but are b) totally fine with you determining it with extreme precision based on other available data. Such a Valve does not and cannot exist.
    - larsiusprime 8y ago
      I know tons of developers and publishers and I have never ever heard of Valve selling their dataset to publishers. Also based on the TOS that I signed with them as a developer (and presumably is the same for every other developer) it would be a violation of their contract with me to share my stats without my permission.
- phobosdeimos 8y ago
  Publishers and developers don't want sales numbers public because gamers will quickly pick up on low sales and meme you to death. Any bad exposure on the internet can sink a game real fast.
bartervg 8y ago
It's a valid assumption. For example, Portal 2's achievement Wake Up Call is 67.8% now [1]. Last week, it was 68.8%. [1] https://steamcommunity.com/stats/Portal2/achievements https://steamcommunity.com/stats/Portal2/achievements
fenomas 8y ago
> Despite the truncated rounding, the technique could probably still be valuable. How would that work exactly? As long as a title has over, say, 10,000 sales, rounded percentages don't eliminate any possible values for the total number. If one value doesn't give you any information, how would sampling more values help?

by hhmc 8y ago

AznHisoka 8y ago

Why would they patch it? In other words why would people knowing the sales number of games hurt them?

vermilingua 8y ago
“Why would it hurt them” and “Why can’t Valve leak potentially sensitive financial details of their partners/clients” are two ways of wording the same question here.
shoo 8y ago
it lets people accurately estimate sales / revenue of businesses, or market demand. that's valuable information that game developers / publishers / steams might not want to share by default without getting something valuable in return.
- AznHisoka 8y ago
  Isnt Amazon doing a similar thing by showing the Sales rank of a product then? And Twitter recently now lets you see the ads for any company/competitor as well. its not sales figures but its still competitor intelligence.
  - dalore 8y ago
    In those cases the companies chose to expose that information as it helps sellers and drivers competition amongst the competitors.
    - AznHisoka 8y ago
      How do I then remove my Sales rank from being being displayed? I sell a few products there and I never chose to expose that rank to anyone.
      - ikeboy 8y ago
        Switch to a category that doesn't have ranks, rare but some products don't have it. If you're one of the top 10k products within a main category Amazon will release it in their public data anyway though.
CamTin 8y ago
They must have reasons for not wanting this figure to be public. If they didn't, they would just expose it directly via the API or in the UI instead of making people solve a fun math puzzle to tease it out of other figures.
- derefr 8y ago
  If they're the only one with the dataset, they can sell that dataset to publishers. If someone else scrapes the dataset from them, though, then that person or organization can then also sell it to publishers, reducing its market value when Valve goes to sell it. This is the same reason LinkedIn makes it so hard to scrape their graph.
  - CamTin 8y ago
    Sure, that's one possible reason. Whatever their actual motivations, one thing that we know for sure is that the don't want this data out there. Therefore it should be no surprise that they dull the accuracy on achievements as soon as it is reported that this can be used to divine the numbers. There's not a logically-consistent position Valve could have where they both a) don't want to provide the data directly, but are b) totally fine with you determining it with extreme precision based on other available data. Such a Valve does not and cannot exist.
  - larsiusprime 8y ago
    I know tons of developers and publishers and I have never ever heard of Valve selling their dataset to publishers. Also based on the TOS that I signed with them as a developer (and presumably is the same for every other developer) it would be a violation of their contract with me to share my stats without my permission.
phobosdeimos 8y ago
Publishers and developers don't want sales numbers public because gamers will quickly pick up on low sales and meme you to death. Any bad exposure on the internet can sink a game real fast.

bartervg 8y ago

It's a valid assumption. For example, Portal 2's achievement Wake Up Call is 67.8% now [1]. Last week, it was 68.8%. [1] https://steamcommunity.com/stats/Portal2/achievements https://steamcommunity.com/stats/Portal2/achievements

fenomas 8y ago

> Despite the truncated rounding, the technique could probably still be valuable. How would that work exactly? As long as a title has over, say, 10,000 sales, rounded percentages don't eliminate any possible values for the total number. If one value doesn't give you any information, how would sampling more values help?