How Genre Radar gets its numbers

Every number in the Monday email comes from Steam's public store pages. Nothing is scraped from behind a login and nothing is bought from a data vendor. Here's what happens each night.

1. Find the games

For every tag someone tracks, the radar asks Steam's store search for two lists:

• the 100 newest releases with that tag
• the 100 most-wishlisted upcoming games with that tag

Run every night, the first list catches every release. The second is what the launch-window check uses. That also means the launch check only sees upcoming games people are actually wishlisting. A game with no page views won't show up, and that's usually fine: it isn't the one you're competing with.

2. Look up the details

For each game it hasn't seen recently, the radar fetches the store details: name, release date, price, free or paid. Upcoming games are re-checked every few days because release dates move.

3. Count reviews

For every game released in the last 60 days, it saves the total review count and the share of positive reviews once a day. That daily history is where "reviews +7d" comes from: today's total minus the total a week ago.

Review counts include all languages and key activations. That's why they can be higher than the number on the store page, which by default shows reviews in your language from Steam purchases only.

4. The sales range

The email shows a range like 3,810–7,620. That's reviews × 30 to reviews × 60, a rule of thumb that's been floating around the indie scene for years. It's wrong for plenty of games. Very cheap games, free weekends and games with heavy key giveaways all break it.

Treat the range as a size class. "Hundreds", "thousands", "tens of thousands". Not a figure to put in a pitch deck.

What it doesn't do

• It doesn't know about wishlists for released games or anything from Steamworks.
• It doesn't guess revenue. Discounts, regional pricing and refunds make that a coin flip.
• It won't tell you what to make. It tells you what just happened.

If a number looks off, reply to the email with the game's name. I'll check it.