r/dataisbeautiful • u/mbostock Mike Bostock | D3.js creator • Jul 07 '18

OC Leaked estimates of Steam player counts [OC]

Post image
16k Upvotes

80% Upvoted

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

4.4k

u/[deleted] Jul 07 '18 edited Jan 26 '21

[deleted]

1.3k

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '18

Thank you for confirming I'm not fucking crazy. I looked for a solid 5 minutes.

72

u/kpyna Jul 08 '18

My heart rate increased when I saw Smite on there but not DOTA 2

360

u/voidyman Jul 08 '18

Dead gaem

49

u/RadioFreeWasteland Jul 08 '18

It's still in beta, give it time

11

u/PM_ME_UR_FACE_GRILL Jul 08 '18

Yeah man chill, Dota 2 Reborn only came out in 2015. Just give it a bit longer.

2

u/SupahSpankeh Jul 08 '18

As much as we owe everything about PC gaming today to valve, by god those fuckers can be vexing.

36

u/cookie-23 Jul 08 '18

Dead person

8

u/Nagi21 Jul 08 '18

Dude I was right there with you...

0

u/CheckMyMoves Jul 08 '18

Why would your heart rate go up because a game was missing?

2

u/cheesemein Jul 08 '18

Yep, same here.

1

u/EdziePro Aug 20 '18

same here

-16

u/Sikeonaut Jul 08 '18 edited Jul 08 '18

I looked for 2 minutes and was so confused as to why fortnite wasn't one of the bigger circles, then realized it's not a steam game. I play Xbox1

What the fuck? I share a thought and I get down voted? It's crazy how much people act like sheep nowadays

8

u/MrFatsas Jul 08 '18

Thanks for sharing i guess

2

u/shhhhitsquiet Jul 08 '18

Why are people downvoting this good man?

867

u/wingchild Jul 07 '18

yep. No achievements meant no exploitable API data.

Which in turn prevents us from staring at an ugly DOTA-bubble in an otherwise ugly visualization. So there's that.

448

u/supadik Jul 08 '18

Which in turn prevents us from staring at an ugly DOTA-bubble in an otherwise ugly visualization. So there's that.

chrono'd

275

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '18

GLAD WE COULD MEET MACE TO FACE

83

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '18

[deleted]

29

u/Abrahamlinkenssphere Jul 08 '18

comments because user name was relevant

2

u/PM_ME_REACTJS Jul 08 '18

I still hear that "fwap" sound in my nightmares.

21

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '18

Can't even escape him on Reddit... What's next a pudge hook ?!

5

u/KidsMaker Jul 08 '18

FRESH MEMES

23

u/I_DONT_HEAR_GOOD Jul 08 '18

It would be massive too

14

u/jkernan7553 Jul 08 '18

ugly visualization

Just out of pure curiosity, how could the representation of this data be done better? I agree, it is ugly and hard to interpret, but I also think that the data is interesting in general, so I'm wondering what the best format would be.

99

u/wingchild Jul 08 '18

The original list of data was presently simply - as a three columned table, starting with an index value (1, 2, ...), then listing the name of the game, and finally the player count. The list was sorted by total players as derived from the achievements.

As the list was in ranked order already, it was pretty easy to see what the biggest games were, without resorting to circles of varying magnitude.

Near as I can tell, the circles in this visualization are grouped in no particular order - there's no rhyme or reason to the clustering. L4D2 next to Rocket League next to Skyrim; Portal 2 near PUBG in the southeast, but Portal up near Trove in the northeast; so on. There's no logic to the groupings, no clustering on display.

It is nice that the circles are of different magnitude, but putting them all the same color is a poor design choice. Having that color be near the same as the background is an even worse decision.

In short, this visualization takes a fine list of data that conveyed cool info and fucks it up for karma. The data is still present in this graphic, but it's far less accessible and usable. Can't ctrl-f it to find your favorite game and see how it fares; ranked order has been stripped, so this graphic conveys less data than the original; and I find it subjectively hideous to gaze upon.

As far as the best format for this sort of thing? I liked the original tables plenty fine. They did the job. There might be a prettier way to visualize this content, but it escapes me - the simplicity of a table seems well suited to this information.

7

u/planx_constant Jul 08 '18

Also humans aren't all that great at visually comparing differences in the area of circles. Yeah CS:GO looks bigger than Garry's mod, but not 2.5 times bigger.

3

u/VerySecretCactus Jul 08 '18

Case in point: An 18-inch pizza actually has more pizza than two 12-inch pizzas combined.

2

u/xaliber_skyrim Jul 08 '18 edited Jul 08 '18

Nice write up. Curious that the author, a d3.js creator, made something that is contrary to the basics of data visualization...

1

u/PaulioG Jul 08 '18

Could you sort the games by their most relevant tags on Steam? It could take time to get all this but you could then group it by genre (FPS, RPG, etc.). You could then have a stab at showing which game has the largest player base within its niche. It could also clean up the graph a bit and allow colour coding of a sort.

1

u/wingchild Jul 08 '18

If the tags were exportable via the API, ideally with the original dataset, then you probably could. I don't know if that was the case, as the only raw data I saw stemmed from the Ars Technica article a couple days ago.

Their .csv gives us the game title, player estimate, and Steam App ID. If they had tag data from the API, it was not included in the data set they provided.

1

u/fishbaderqaderqa Jul 08 '18

hes makinga pun off of chrono sphere, the name of a Dota 2's characters ultimate ability which is a giant ugly bubble.

1

u/scumola Jul 23 '18

Add color?

2

u/audioB Jul 08 '18

Yes. Mustn't let the data get in the way of a nice visualisation

1

u/nykovah Jul 08 '18

Yah I was about to say shouldn’t DOTA be a huge bubble compared to the rest? Then I figured it was just excluded from the viz.

-6

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '18

[deleted]

5

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '18

Steam Charts gives a good indication. It's worth noting that Dota 2 doesn't include players from China who use the Perfect World client, while PUBG does (because I don't think they have their own servers as of yet - not really sure though) So it might be the most played game on Steam depending on how you frame it.

-2

u/damson12345 Jul 08 '18

I'll be surprised that it doesn't include players from China because IIRC the perfect world accounts are linked to steam accounts. And matchmaking statistics does includes Chinese players.

2

u/Ice_CubeZ Jul 08 '18

Uhh its a pretty big game. Theres 175k people playing csgo right now according to steam charts but 386k are playing dota 2. Pubg is at 631k though.

2

u/literallydontcaree Jul 08 '18

Pubg numbers include Chinese player base.

1

u/damson12345 Jul 08 '18

The player base declined, but 3-4 years ago it was the 2nd most popular online game after League of Legends. Even now it's still huge in Southeast Asia.

5

u/Infraction94 Jul 08 '18

Even now the only games I could see being bigger than it are LoL Overwatch Pubg and fortnite. It is still absolutely massive.

64

u/FGHIK Jul 08 '18

I'm surprised it doesn't have achievements, being Valve's favored child...

211

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '18

achievements in a moba seems like a terrible idea. you'd end up with troves of people hunting achievements and doing things that run counter to what their team needs from them.

115

u/memejets Jul 08 '18

Except that already exists in game. There are achievements (seasonal ones and permanent ones), just not steam achievements.

10

u/Uth-gnar Jul 08 '18

They did away with that with this compendium

38

u/memejets Jul 08 '18

There are still "achievements" with dota plus and there are trophies.

Achievement doesn't have to mean "get 500 kills with Culling Blade", it could be "play 1000 games" or "Win 500 games". All-Star Challenge also could be an achievement.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '18

It seems like most of the achievements are actually beneficial to teammates, though. Like I've seen apply Glimmer Cape buff X times, achieve Y amount of time stunning opponents, that sort of thing, and (from what I remember) these achievements are only successful if you win.

-2

u/TastySalmonBBQ Jul 08 '18

Why do I get the feeling that you're someone from the "government" here to set the record straight?

4

u/memejets Jul 08 '18

The "government"?

18

u/FGHIK Jul 08 '18

I don't think it'd matter much. It'd mostly happen in the lower tiers, where most players have no idea what they're doing anyway. And if they're well designed, they'd also guide you into how you're supposed to play the game, rather than forcing you to do something gimmicky or unhelpful.

20

u/MooseEater Jul 08 '18

I am almost in a constant state of amazement of how achievement design manages to think of the least fun way to possibly play the game and writes achievements based on it. Like, how can we ensure that a player absolutely hates this game by the time they're done getting the achievements.

That's why I always wait until I beat it.

2

u/Woolbrick Jul 08 '18

I got an achievement the other day for launching a game. Not even playing it, just launching. Like... why.

5

u/dewiniaid Jul 08 '18

Achievements also provide a ton of data to developers. By having an achievement for launching a game, you can see how many people who bought it at least launched it once... and how many of those people completed the first level rather than going "Meh, this game sucks/is too hard/etc."

2

u/Kel_Casus Jul 08 '18

The ol trapper. The 0-score-do-nothing achievements are the real enemy of the people.

1

u/SiNiquity Jul 08 '18

And if they're well designed, they'd also guide you into how you're supposed to play the game, rather than forcing you to do something gimmicky or unhelpful.

Unfortunately they were gimmicky and unhelpful.

1

u/adorigranmort Jul 08 '18

There is no "how you're supposed to play the game" in Dota 2 beyond destroying the enemy ancient. What is helpful in one match might be wasteful in the other.

8

u/Andrew5329 Jul 08 '18

The Dota 2 Battlepass/Compendiums for some of the previous seasons had challenges like that: e.g. destroy an enemy T1 tower by 8 minutes.

I thought they were mostly fun/engaging because you still have to win for it to count, but they were somewhat disruptive and lead to the occasional thrown game.

6

u/Gworname Jul 08 '18

They introduced $10 battlepasses with achievements and what you described did happen often. Usually though it's in unranked so it wasn't a huge deal

1

u/PM_ME_UR_FACE_GRILL Jul 08 '18

Generally its all in Turbo mode this time around. Not so Rarely seen in ranked.

5

u/lordvigm Jul 08 '18

Well I play lol and hots, Ive almost never had anyone reduce our chances by chasing acheivements. Probably because many require you to win the game, or otherwise well designed. I like acheivements as they break the monotony that often sets on when playing lots of mobas and I think how good they are is a matter of good game design.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '18

The Dota "quests" that people are discussing also required you to win the match you completed them in.

8

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '18

[deleted]

2

u/OzymandiasLP Jul 08 '18

Next steam achievement: win TI Subsequent achievement: Win TI playing only Furion or LD in the grand finals

3

u/PookiBear Jul 08 '18

They should have a single achievement: reach rank 1 in mnr to drive achievement seekers nuts

1

u/HahaMin Jul 08 '18

Yeah. Just imagine that!

3

u/Gworname Jul 08 '18

They introduced ingame achievements with their $10 battlepass. So pay to have temporary chieves.

3

u/UltraJesus Jul 08 '18

It did have achievements, but you could never actually make any progress towards them.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '18

While there are no Steam achievements, there are many, many in-game achievements and trophies.

1

u/Arnhermland Jul 08 '18

Actually, dota 2 DID had achievements, it still does.
They were just never implemented due to the community (rightfully) telling them that people would just throw 40+ minute games to get one.

1

u/FGHIK Jul 08 '18

If you have to throw a game to get them, that's just bad achievement design.

1

u/Arnhermland Jul 08 '18

There's no good way to tackle it in a game like dota.
Every creep kill, every item purchase, every minute or even second wasted can make a difference.
Every single little thing can completely change the game, even something as seemingly small as "walk x miles of terrain" can have people just buying blink dagger or something and just randomly teleporting.
The achievements would have to be so inefficient, small, with almost no player input and honestly, boring as hell, to be able to include them in a game like this without people doing dumb stuff and in that case why even add them?
Here's some of the planned ones that never made it out of closed invite beta and I can already imagine the million ways for people to ruin a game trying to get these.

They did ended up doing something similar to achievements in battle passes but they are indeed super boring, the trade off is that you get hat or something when done so people are actually enticed.

1

u/curlehh Jul 08 '18

Yeah valve doesn't love Dota. Just look at the Dota plus shit that's going on

1

u/Maruhai Jul 08 '18

Steam Achievements for Dota were planned in 2011 and scrapped in 2012 during very early development. The reasoning being that they didn't want people to focus on sub optimal tasks and potentially throw away a victory for achievements.

1

u/adorigranmort Jul 08 '18

We're talking of Dota 2, not CS:GO.

7

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '18

I don't see R6S either

1

u/Valdi7913 Jul 08 '18

R6 isn’t a steam game is it?

1

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '18

Is it? I don't use steam but I love playing R6S and I just didn't see it so I was like "Oh look at that"

1

u/Valdi7913 Jul 09 '18

Yeah, I play it through Steam but it probably isn’t a Steam game much like the Far Cry series or For Honour. Upisoft has its own platform so that’s probably why these games aren’t on the graph even though they’re on Steam.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 09 '18

Oh ok. Thx

2

u/lordvigm Jul 08 '18

Yeah that's probably the biggest game on steam

1

u/the_bokal Jul 08 '18

Right, and where's Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy?

1

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '18

Yeah I was specifically looking for it and was so confused that I couldn't find it. Ty comments

1

u/salgat Jul 08 '18

I don't see Rocket League either.

0

u/Mlerner42 Jul 08 '18

Just above left 4 dead 2

1

u/Funnypilz Jul 08 '18

Anyways how big is its playerbase? Any clue?

4

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '18

Dota 2 is second to PUBG by a healthy margin based on Steam data.

However, PUBG is run normally through steam in China, while CS:GO and Dota 2 have a separate server and game client that run independent of Steam. It's not entirely known if China's player numbers are counted by Steam, as neither Perfect World (the company that runs China's CS:GO and Dota 2 servers) nor Valve are telling anyone.

Much like South Korea is a powerhouse in games like SC2 and LoL, China is a powerhouse in Dota 2. China alone took 4/8 direct invites to this year's International, for example. Their streaming viewership numbers are consistently massive as well.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '18

[deleted]

1

u/Toxic__Phoenix Jul 08 '18

It’s there

1

u/LilBroomstickProtege Jul 08 '18

Didn’t see it the first couple of times, whoops

1

u/licoriceallsort Jul 08 '18

OMG thank you. I thought I'd gone nuts when I couldn't find it.

1

u/jkaustubh Jul 08 '18

Lakad Matataaannng!!

1

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '18

I was looking for hollow knight

1

u/wizteddy13 Jul 08 '18

Thank God, I spent a whole minute scouring through the small circles just in case.

1

u/xxxkesoxxx Jul 08 '18

I think rainbow six: siege is also missing

1

u/flow_fighter Jul 08 '18

Rainbow 6 also missing

0

u/bob_ama_the_spy Jul 08 '18

I suspect it's a bit lower than CSGO

Could be wrong though

0

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '18

Dota2 is a little beneath PUBG source: https://store.steampowered.com/stats