why doesn't Steam release the "Year Review" on the last day of the year?

[Dweller Beyond the Threshold]

In its current form, the review basically ignores the second half of December where most people are finally off work and have much higher Steam activity, which is unfortunately not at all represented in the review.

For example, a new game I purchased in December should be one of my top games in terms of time spent in 2025, but it is barely featured on the review because the review got out few days after I bought this game.

[ReBoot]

Originally posted by Dweller Beyond the Threshold:

In its current form, the review basically ignores the second half of December where most people are finally off work and have much higher Steam activity, which is unfortunately not at all represented in the review.

For example, a new game I purchased in December should be one of my top games in terms of time spent in 2025, but it is barely featured on the review because the review got out few days after I bought this game.

The time period is colloquially called "between the years". That's for one.

Next, the time period you're talking about isn't representative. As you said yourself, this time is rather different from the rest of the year. 2(ish) non-representative weeks are the least important data point, not the most important one.

[rawWwRrr]

It's a marketing tool, like all the year end reviews are.

The replays are released when most people are off work, timed for the start of the last sale of the year. It's meant to attract people to the site, drive traffic to the sales. Everyone starts sharing their replays with their friends, the friends see the games, they go to the store to buy the games that they saw on their friend's replay.

Once the 1st of the year comes around, most of the sale is over and people are going back to work after spending tons of money around the holidays and are tapped out. Generating the replays that late in the year means missed sales opportunities.

[Dweller Beyond the Threshold]

Originally posted by rawWwRrr:

It's a marketing tool, like all the year end reviews are.

The replays are released when most people are off work, timed for the start of the last sale of the year. It's meant to attract people to the site, drive traffic to the sales. Everyone starts sharing their replays with their friends, the friends see the games, they go to the store to buy the games that they saw on their friend's replay.

Once the 1st of the year comes around, most of the sale is over and people are going back to work after spending tons of money around the holidays and are tapped out. Generating the replays that late in the year means missed sales opportunities.

this explains it perfectly, thanks!

[Dweller Beyond the Threshold]

Originally posted by ReBoot:

Originally posted by Dweller Beyond the Threshold:

In its current form, the review basically ignores the second half of December where most people are finally off work and have much higher Steam activity, which is unfortunately not at all represented in the review.

For example, a new game I purchased in December should be one of my top games in terms of time spent in 2025, but it is barely featured on the review because the review got out few days after I bought this game.

The time period is colloquially called "between the years". That's for one.

Next, the time period you're talking about isn't representative. As you said yourself, this time is rather different from the rest of the year. 2(ish) non-representative weeks are the least important data point, not the most important one.

I get now that it's used for marketing purposes. But for the sake of discussion, let's just entertain the idea that this feature is genuinely meant for players to track their play activity, then it makes no sense to completely ignore data from one of the most active periods for most people. I don't get your point about this part being ignored because it's "unrepresentative". This isn't a tool meant to calculate some accurate median/averages and thus the data need to be representative. It's simply meant to record what games we play and it's a big oversight to just completely gloss over all the games played during this period.

[ReBoot]

Originally posted by Dweller Beyond the Threshold:

Originally posted by ReBoot:

The time period is colloquially called "between the years". That's for one.

Next, the time period you're talking about isn't representative. As you said yourself, this time is rather different from the rest of the year. 2(ish) non-representative weeks are the least important data point, not the most important one.

I get now that it's used for marketing purposes. But for the sake of discussion, let's just entertain the idea that this feature is genuinely meant for players to track their play activity, then it makes no sense to completely ignore data from one of the most active periods for most people. I don't get your point about this part being ignored because it's "unrepresentative". This isn't a tool meant to calculate some accurate median/averages and thus the data need to be representative. It's simply meant to record what games we play and it's a big oversight to just completely gloss over all the games played during this period.

Nope, I'm not going the "for the sake of the discussion" rabbit hole as that one's arbitrary. I could open with "for the sake of the discussion, let's say GabeN got a personal history with that mid-december date due to what happened in his childhood".