Improving Steam estimates using regression analysis and overlap

Owner estimates have been one of the most used features of Insight since its launch, but they have also been the most controversial. We've had a lot of hits, but we've also had some misses.

While we've made no secret of our methodology and the very wide array of "wrong" that methodology brings, we've worked on improving our estimate over time. One of the biggest changes to that methodology will be rolling out for Steam games over the course of the following week. During this time, owner estimates may fluctuate and this fluctuation is not related to real-world stimulus.

Since Insight launched, we've been gathering data points on confirmed game sales. Whether an indie dev tweeted his sales or Microsoft bragged about selling over a million copies of Sea of Thieves on Steam, we recorded everything we could find in a database of bias. While this would immediately adjust that game's estimate if we were off, we will now start using that data to adjust estimates for other similar games using regression analysis.

Basically, we'll use instances where we were wrong (and when we were right) to determine where our sample research overestimates or underestimates things, and use that to adjust our formula on the fly. This doesn't mean our estimates will become 100% accurate, but they will hopefully be a bit more accurate.

Naturally, our Steam estimates will remain fully freely available as they have since launch. We will also continue to add to this database of confirmed numbers, so feel free to continue letting us know if you see any!

Thank you all for your support of PlayTracker!  We look forward to improving Insight more in the future and will share more plans for that once this rollout is complete.