- Games disappearing from N&T is probably not "super rare". On those screenshots, it looks like both Sex Doll Simulator and Word Factori fell off the list, and neither of them have Mixed reviews.
- It can take a while to hit N&T (or to return to the list), not just within the first few hrs. White Album apparently came out on Aug 3, but it didn't appear in my Aug 5 screenshot - only the Aug 7 one. Similarly, Komorebi apparently came out on Jul 27. I dunno if this was its first N&T appearance, but it's not in the Aug 5 screenshot.
Basically, it's good to know that the list is roughly sorted by release date rather than popularity, but it looks like games falling off the list/getting belatedly added to the list is pretty common too.
This is a great comment! I'm doing a follow-up [EDIT: on Wednesday!] and I'm going to edit this story to add two things: 1. 'Mixed' reviews for smaller games likely bumping them off the list 2. Some more 'rechecking' may happen, especially for smaller games, than I thought.
Hi Simon! Super interesting read as usual. Thanks for sharing!
Regarding the "New and trending", I'd like to share a piece of info that might add to our understanding of how the feature works in the store.
I'm one of the developers of the game called Landnama. We released on July 31st on Steam, and after a pretty quick ramp up in sales, we appeared in "New and trending". However, when the first ratings came in we ended up with "Mixed" reviews (long story short, we released at chinese prime time and both the difficulty level and the subpar chinese loca caused a lot of disappointment with our chinese community).
After about a few hours, we disappeared from "New and trending" -> which means that not only velocity of sales but also rating matters. Steam does not advertise "Mixed" games in the New and trending category, even if sales are picking up nicely.
Now, yesterday we finally crawled out of the early review hole and back to an overall "mostly positive" rating and we appeared again in the "New and trending" section!
So 1/ rating matters and only games above 70% will show 2/ you do not drop from the section but are hidden from it and can appear again if the ratings improve?
I hope this will help the community understand the intricacies of the feature a bit more :)
Hey, thanks for the writeup on New & Trending. I've thought about this a lot, and I didn't realize that it might be a flag rather than a leaderboard.
At a glance, though, this seems a little inconsistent. Here's a quick screenshot that I took on Aug 5: https://imgur.com/VZmuYz5
And again on Aug 7: https://imgur.com/7AgJiIu
A couple of interesting points:
- Games disappearing from N&T is probably not "super rare". On those screenshots, it looks like both Sex Doll Simulator and Word Factori fell off the list, and neither of them have Mixed reviews.
- It can take a while to hit N&T (or to return to the list), not just within the first few hrs. White Album apparently came out on Aug 3, but it didn't appear in my Aug 5 screenshot - only the Aug 7 one. Similarly, Komorebi apparently came out on Jul 27. I dunno if this was its first N&T appearance, but it's not in the Aug 5 screenshot.
Basically, it's good to know that the list is roughly sorted by release date rather than popularity, but it looks like games falling off the list/getting belatedly added to the list is pretty common too.
This is a great comment! I'm doing a follow-up [EDIT: on Wednesday!] and I'm going to edit this story to add two things: 1. 'Mixed' reviews for smaller games likely bumping them off the list 2. Some more 'rechecking' may happen, especially for smaller games, than I thought.
Hi Simon! Super interesting read as usual. Thanks for sharing!
Regarding the "New and trending", I'd like to share a piece of info that might add to our understanding of how the feature works in the store.
I'm one of the developers of the game called Landnama. We released on July 31st on Steam, and after a pretty quick ramp up in sales, we appeared in "New and trending". However, when the first ratings came in we ended up with "Mixed" reviews (long story short, we released at chinese prime time and both the difficulty level and the subpar chinese loca caused a lot of disappointment with our chinese community).
After about a few hours, we disappeared from "New and trending" -> which means that not only velocity of sales but also rating matters. Steam does not advertise "Mixed" games in the New and trending category, even if sales are picking up nicely.
Now, yesterday we finally crawled out of the early review hole and back to an overall "mostly positive" rating and we appeared again in the "New and trending" section!
So 1/ rating matters and only games above 70% will show 2/ you do not drop from the section but are hidden from it and can appear again if the ratings improve?
I hope this will help the community understand the intricacies of the feature a bit more :)
Cheers!
Mathias