Actionable Steam Metrics
By Baby Ghosts11/10/2025strategy
Actionable Steam metrics
Jennie: I want to share some tips from a recent workshop at GamePlay Space on Steam metrics. I hope my notes are helpful!
Wednesday, Nov 9 with Alden Kroll (Valve)
How to use reporting within Steam to make decisions as you deploy and ship your game.
Understanding Steam data sites
Alden highlighted three main Steam portals that offer data on game performance:
| Portal | Description |
|---|---|
| Sales and Activations Reports portal | Your go-to once you have a store page for your game. It helps you track performance indicators like sales, players, and wishlists. Only useful once you have a store page for your game. Provides a "near real-time view into revenue, units, player counts, geographic breakdown, and other statistics related to your product." |
| Steamworks | A handy tool for monitoring game traffic, visibility, and builds usage. |
| Steam charts | Offers a global perspective with charts, stats, and reports. |
Pre-release data gathering
Pre-release is all about understanding the potential audience and the market landscape. Here are some things Alden recommended you pay attention to:
| Metric | Description |
|---|---|
| Hardware survey | Steam's platform-wide data can guide technical requirements, like screen resolution, languages, and hardware compatibility. |
| Tag pages | Use these for market research, identifying trends in successful games, their features, scope, qualities, price points, and presentation styles. |
| Wishlists | Key to gauging awareness and building an audience to engage upon release and during discounts. They can also provide platform-specific stats and indicate long-term growth trends. Lifetime conversion shows up after 3 months. Cohorts: long term cohort growth indicates price sensitive users waiting for a better deal. |
| Regional wishlists | Localization ideas can be drawn from regional wishlist data. To access this, head to sales and activations reports, select your game, and click on Regional sales report. |
| UTM tracking | This tool helps measure the impact of external marketing like streamer and press outreach. Chris Zukowski's guide on how to use Steam’s UTM feature was recommended for more info. |
| Steam playtest | The playtest feature can give you specific data about your potential audience, including hardware usage and regional player breakdown. |
| Data articles | Keep an eye on Valve's occasional articles; they provide useful data on things like controller usage trends, wishlisting trends, and findings from events like NextFest. |
Post-release metrics and analysis
Once the game is out, here are the metrics you should track:
| Metric | Description |
|---|---|
| Game sales data reports | Compare time periods, countries, and promotional events. Use comparison tools to compare periods of time. Choose “preferences” and then choose time period. |
| Game player numbers | Metrics like concurrent players and daily active users show traction. What are the effects of shipping updates? |
| Median playtime | Track the average playtime to understand how long players are engaging with the game, and if there's a drop-off point you need to address. |
| Remote play stats | Monitor how many people are playing your game on other devices or via the remote play together feature. To access: Sales and activations reports > Select your game > Click Remote Play Stats on the right |
| Controller usage | Understand the input devices players are using, especially controllers. The Steam Input API can help ensure complete support for all devices. |
| Game hardware survey | A monthly survey sampling from players gives you details on hardware specs (CPU, GPU, OS, Memory, etc.). This is useful to ensure the game is compatible with the most common hardware. |
| Steam key activations | Shows where batches of keys are ending up and how many are being redeemed. Note: once generated, you can't update tags on a batch. Break them down as much as you can. |
| Refund data | See the reasons and notes left by customers during refund. Can be useful to identify blocking issues for players _To access: Select a package for your game > Click Refund Data on right hand menu |
| User reviews | Not exactly a metric, but reviews offer a treasure trove of qualitative data about your game's performance and reception. Monitor and code them to identify trends and issues. There's an API call to get a full list if you wish to run your own analysis! |
| Events & announcements | Each post comes with visibility, open info, and voting data. |
| Promos and discounts | Analyze how players respond to different price points to optimize your discount strategy. Is there a sweet spot for discounting your game? Which events connect you best with players? Combine with reports previously mentioned to compare results. CSV includes base price and sale price so you can tell when it’s a discounted purchase. CSV exports available. |
| Traffic and visibility | Understand where your game appears on Steam and how players find it. What paths are players taking to find your game? See how visibility reacts to spikes in player interest. CSV export available. |
| Beta branch users | Track how many players opt into each branch of your game build. This can provide useful feedback on the stability of builds. |
| In-game purchases | If you're selling in-game items that can be traded or gifted, anticipate potential fraud. The Steam API has functions like GetUserInfo() and GetReport() that can help monitor this. See docs for microtransactions. |
| Monthly revenue report | Provides a detailed breakdown of sales, refunds, taxes, and net payout. CSV exports. |
Multi-game release
Once you have more than one game Alden pointed out that you can start comparing them to each other using the top menu of the sales portal, allowing you to see various reports and easily compare all your games in aggregate.
Key areas to consider in multi-game release scenarios are:
| Metric | Description |
|---|---|
| Bundles sales data | Compare the performance of your game in both standalone and bundled formats. |
| Regional sales stats | By comparing how your games perform in different regions, you can identify key geographic areas for marketing and localization. |
Alden recommended checking out the Steam API documentation for a detailed understanding of the various features and how to use them.