Real Time Player Count For Every Game

[Humbleification]

Just a suggestion or idea that every game should have a real time player count. It gives users a sense of how popular a game is and whether it would be worth the money investing. Statistics of game with a good playerbase after a year or two serves a good tool for people who choose the games they buy carefully. We have Steam reviews but I think a active player counter would help reflect those reviews.

[999999999]

Game hubs have that info but it is only for accounts that have "Games Details" in their privacy settings public so, a true count is never going to happen due to privacy restrictions.

[Humbleification]

Originally posted by 999999999:

Game hubs have that info but it is only for accounts that have "Games Details" in their privacy settings public so, a true count is never going to happen due to privacy restrictions.

True but a rough estimate is better than none I would say. Would like to see it implemented just to make it easier to buy games that are online.

[999999999]

That setting was defaulted to private in the April update. It will not be accurate at all. Most still don't know that is set to private still to this today.

[Humbleification]

Originally posted by 999999999:

That setting was defaulted to private in the April update. It will not be accurate at all. Most still don't know that is set to private still to this today.

That is very interesting

[999999999]

Originally posted by Humbleification:

Originally posted by 999999999:

That setting was defaulted to private in the April update. It will not be accurate at all. Most still don't know that is set to private still to this today.

That is very interesting

One example of this... https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/3315110799627721750/

Post #6 is where it starts getting interesting. Notice he still does not know his is also private still.

[Eldin]

Originally posted by 999999999:

Game hubs have that info but it is only for accounts that have "Games Details" in their privacy settings public so, a true count is never going to happen due to privacy restrictions.

3rd party tracking sites like steamdb.info for example can't see games of people who have games details set to private.
But if Steam itself kept tracking, then they could have accurate numbers.

[999999999]

Originally posted by Eldin:

Originally posted by 999999999:

Game hubs have that info but it is only for accounts that have "Games Details" in their privacy settings public so, a true count is never going to happen due to privacy restrictions.

3rd party tracking sites like steamdb.info for example can't see games of people who have games details set to private.
But if Steam itself kept tracking, then they could have accurate numbers.

They don't if it is not public. That is part of the privacy update in accordance with the EU laws.

[Eldin]

Originally posted by 999999999:

Originally posted by Eldin:

3rd party tracking sites like steamdb.info for example can't see games of people who have games details set to private.
But if Steam itself kept tracking, then they could have accurate numbers.

They don't if it is not public. That is part of the privacy update in accordance with the EU laws.

I didn't knew that. But I still don't understand, even when everything is set to private, how Valve can't know how many people bought the game from them and how many are currently playing it using their client while connected to their servers?

[Zekiran]

because they aren't allowed to keep accessing that information.