t
Arcane
- Joined
- Aug 24, 2008
- Messages
- 1,303
I have noticed AoD jumping between 30-ish, 50-ish and 70-ish place in steam top 100 best selling early access games pretty rapidly. Since I have recently aquired a highly unhealthy interest in the sales figures of Incline(tm) games (even before releases thereof), I hoped I could fish for information a little bit.
Since the jump between 50-ish and 30-ish place happens on the matter of hours or a single day, my best guess would be that games in the second 50 of the top 100 are purchased barely or even not at all. Every restless soul deciding to buy into the fantasy of early access games would then contribute to a jump of several places in the hierarchy.
The other, less grim hypothesis would be that there is a positive feedback loop between going up in the ranks and selling more copies, as being higher in the charts would somehow promote the game more. Unfortunately, it seems rather far-fetched, as I cannot really see why having to scroll two additional pages in the best selling chart would constitute a significant hindrance.
There might also be some other factors that I have failed to pinpoint. Definitely every update propels the game upwards on the list, I guess because of the exposure? Maybe steam has some quasi-random way of promoting various games and every time it happens, a couple dozens of copies are sold.
I believe steam has some strict policy about the sales figures transparency, but any tidbits from the devs/other informed people would be highly appreciated.
Since the jump between 50-ish and 30-ish place happens on the matter of hours or a single day, my best guess would be that games in the second 50 of the top 100 are purchased barely or even not at all. Every restless soul deciding to buy into the fantasy of early access games would then contribute to a jump of several places in the hierarchy.
The other, less grim hypothesis would be that there is a positive feedback loop between going up in the ranks and selling more copies, as being higher in the charts would somehow promote the game more. Unfortunately, it seems rather far-fetched, as I cannot really see why having to scroll two additional pages in the best selling chart would constitute a significant hindrance.
There might also be some other factors that I have failed to pinpoint. Definitely every update propels the game upwards on the list, I guess because of the exposure? Maybe steam has some quasi-random way of promoting various games and every time it happens, a couple dozens of copies are sold.
I believe steam has some strict policy about the sales figures transparency, but any tidbits from the devs/other informed people would be highly appreciated.