He added in an email to
Kotaku that while it might be tempting to believe this was a targeted strike on Valve’s part (this is data they’d probably prefer to keep private, after all), he thinks Steam Spy’s unceremonious fate is more of a byproduct. “I’m not sure this was done to remove Steam Spy, seeing as they’ve also limited people’s ability to join their friends in their games,” he said. “This has far too many implications for Steam.” More privacy by default is, of course, a good thing, but it’s come at the cost of a service that thrived in Steam’s margins.
Responding to Twitter questions about Steam Spy’s future, Galyonkin further explained that opt-in data gathering won’t work for the types of estimates his site was doing, and he doubts he’ll be able to strike a deal with Valve to regain the level of data access he had before. He added that, if nothing else, he’ll keep an archive up, and he’s
considering other estimation methods. They wouldn’t be as precise, but they’d be something.
Still, he’s not particularly optimistic at the moment.
“I don’t think there are any options unless Valve reverts this particular part of the update,” he told me.