Valve plans to develop tools that are “more accurate and useful” than Steam Spy

Back in April, Valve made several changes to Steam’s privacy settings which limited the amount of data that third parties could collect from users of the platform. This positive data privacy mode has an unwanted side effect, as it took away data that is vital for services like Steam Spy, a tool that can track game sales, concurrent players and other data with a reasonable degree of accuracy. 

Steam’s privacy update broke Steam Spy, leaving many developers frustrated, as the data provided by Steam Spy is extremely useful for game analytics. 

While speaking at a Games Industry conference in Russia, Valve’s head of business development, Jan-Peter Ewert, stated that Valve is building an alternative to Steam Spy, a tool that will be “more accurate and useful than Steam Spy”. 

Valve can make more money if developers can find success on their platform. Developers can find more success if they can access and interpret game sales data and use that to access a larger audience for their games. Valve wants to give developers the information that they need to make good business decisions, which should, in turn, allow Valve to benefit financially.   

 
Below is a comment from Jan-Peter Ewart, which is taken from a recording of the event from Oleg Chumakov.