Heatseeker
A weekly scan of Steam for trending games by a variety of metrics
Live
This tool was built to scan the entire Steam (game store) space and find games that are popular, or trending, by a number of different criteria, with the main being able to locate the "Hidden Gems". This tool takes data directly from Steam's official API, and applies dynamic logic and a set of filtering criteria in order to arrive at the eligible population for consideration.
The Sunday Scan
Every week on Sunday at 3am the tool starts its dynamic logic in order to pull the most recent data available, enriched with reviews and tags. This is also where the week's floor is established, and how many games were filtered out of view.
Four Ways to Trend
Games are ranked in one of four ways: Breakouts, Hidden Gems, Revivals, and Micro-Movers.
- Breakouts are new releases that cleared "the hot floor".
- Hidden Gems (the main reason for the tool) are games sitting between one hundred players and the floor, with a review score above 90%, ranked by what players think of them rather than how many played the game.
- Revivals are old games that are spiking, usually due to a DLC or seasonal content.
- Micro-movers are established games climbing week over week.
Game Popularity
Clicking into a game lets the user see concurrent player counts over time. These charts display our own data, taken from our own snapshots and stitched together. When a new game is seen that is why there is a message that reads "not enough history yet".