This is criminal behaviour. Shouldn't this be the short of shite that gets the government to shut down a company?
The company is in Mexico.
This is criminal behaviour. Shouldn't this be the short of shite that gets the government to shut down a company?
Is no one else going to call him out on how this site in general is obviously not for the developers? There are legitimate reasons to hide this info. You're hurting dev bargaining positions by posting it. He's a scumbag.
Aggregated Steam user reviews also hurt dev bargaining positions. Is Gabe Newell a scumbag for allowing them?Is no one else going to call him out on how this site in general is obviously not for the developers? There are legitimate reasons to hide this info. You're hurting dev bargaining positions by posting it. He's a scumbag.
Is no one else going to call him out on how this site in general is obviously not for the developers? There are legitimate reasons to hide this info. You're hurting dev bargaining positions by posting it. He's a scumbag.
But this information is already public. Literally anyone with a few hours on their hands and some basic/intermediate programming skills could get this information.
He's not exposing something that was hidden previously. He's taking something that was always available and summarizing it.
It would be unrealistic to expect Valve to ignore the noise, though. It's a business, not a 12-year-old child. CS:GO betting websites weren't a bad thing for Valve, either.
I'm an amateur, part-time indie developer and I want the data available.
Wasn't really the point I made though, was it? So, right back at you.
But this information is already public. Literally anyone with a few hours on their hands and some basic/intermediate programming skills could get this information.
He's not exposing something that was hidden previously. He's taking something that was always available and summarizing it.
1) What legal action can they press over public data? If that was possible, polling companies would be out of business as soon as they published unfavorable results.
2) Valve's API exists to prevent people from bot combing the same data from the public profiles on Steam, eating up a lot of server resources for nothing. I doubt they are going to block the API over this when Steamspy has been fine for 18 months now. Their only stipulation was that you can't charge money for the API data.
I'd love for things to go that way, but corporations have their methods of doing things. If nothing bad comes out of it, absolutely great. But I can still feel that something is going to change, and not for the better.There can be no legal action against steamspy because it isn't doing anything illegal.
It's just analyzing public data in an automated process.
For the very same reason publishers also dont have the right to hide it.
Is no one else going to call him out on how this site in general is obviously not for the developers? There are legitimate reasons to hide this info. You're hurting dev bargaining positions by posting it. He's a scumbag.
Looks like SteamSpy might be under a DDoS attack?
I tried going to their page again and for several minutes I got a CloudFlare DDoS safety page before finally getting to see the SS front page. It's dodgy, though.
Getting a bit more traffic than usual. And the usual traffic is pretty heavy already: ~2 million requests per day.
It's public information. If they want something done about it, they can complain to Valve about it. SteamSpy is collecting and aggregating public information, and have zero legal reason to stop doing so.
So no, they really should not respect any request from a developer who wants what is public information hidden solely to protect their own interests.
I'm an amateur, part-time indie developer and I want the data available.
So because you're a developer and want the data available, everyone should make it available?
Is no one else going to call him out on how this site in general is obviously not for the developers? There are legitimate reasons to hide this info. You're hurting dev bargaining positions by posting it. He's a scumbag.
To cut the story short: Squad were one of the only publishers who wanted their data removed from Steamspy. Later, an ex Kerbal dev revealed that Squad were paying their employees insultingly low wages, demanding massive amounts of crunch, and then firing them as soon as their work was finished. So, it becomes a little clearer why they might want to hide sales data from their own employees.
Steamspy is down for some reason.
SteamSpy said:The site is down, will probably have to restart it. Nothing to worry about.
Getting a bit more traffic than usual. And the usual traffic is pretty heavy already: ~2 million requests per day.
I believe I should be able to see sales data. You can with books and movies no issue right?
I'm saying that, as a developer, Steamspy's current policy is in accordance with what I want. I suspect many others feel the same way, and that this number far outweighs those who ask their own data to be removed.So because you're a developer and want the data available, everyone should make it available?
Should a company tell me I'm not supposed to go through all my friends steam profiles and see what games they own and compile how many own x game? The company has no right to tell me what I can do with publicly available data. That's what Steamspy does, it goes through steam user profiles which by default displays what games they own and compiles it. Not to mention it's even important to its own employees that are sometimes not privy to how much the game they worked on has sold because of corporate bullshit.
Companies can't take any legal action against Steamspy or Valve, they're not doing anything wrong, otherwise companies would've been sending them legal letters a long time ago. Fact is, companies don't like their employees and public knowing stuff about them and that's why they want to hide it. Their wishes don't need to be respected since nobody hacked their corporate network and stole secret financial data that was released to the public.
My point was no more than what I said it was.If I'm not mistaken, your point was that these developers (it's actually publishers, and only three of them out of the thousands out there) didn't find the data "useful", when the apparent reason for them asking isn't that they don't find the data useful, but that it helps them shield their employees from actual sales data. Which is useful only as far as terrible employment practices are useful.
So from my POV you missed the point. The idea that it's "not useful" to these developers is apparently disingenuous. There's an ulterior motive.
Yes.
Except it's not the sales data.
The way I see it, the only company that should be able make such requests is Valve.
Seems like the guy is combing their databases to gather info, similar to what trophy/achievement sites do. How much of that is legal, all or none, I have no idea, but since this site exists for a while without any problems with Steam itself, guess its legit.
Previous requests were honored out of courtesy, and I can see where it can get annoying. But also less profitable, because I doubt this guy is doing the work just as a hobby.
Anyway, seeing that Steamspy is not honoring the requests, Techland and others should forward their complaints to Valve if they want any results.
My point was no more than what I said it was.
In your own post you have illustrated perfectly why replying with such condescension is best avoided.
But still, the data on Steamspy isn't accurate by any means if you want to calculate the revenue the company got.
Is no one else going to call him out on how this site in general is obviously not for the developers? There are legitimate reasons to hide this info. You're hurting dev bargaining positions by posting it. He's a scumbag.
Except it's not the sales data.
SteamSpy is using Steam APIs in a way they probably weren't meant to be used. As such, Valve could probably shut the site down (by not allowing them to use their APIs) if the site owner doesn't play by Valve's arbitrary rules.
So, whether what he's doing is illegal or not is kinda irrelevant if Valve feels the owner is hurting their business/reputation by not honoring these requests.
Is no one else going to call him out on how this site in general is obviously not for the developers? There are legitimate reasons to hide this info. You're hurting dev bargaining positions by posting it. He's a scumbag.
Is no one else going to call him out on how this site in general is obviously not for the developers? There are legitimate reasons to hide this info. You're hurting dev bargaining positions by posting it. He's a scumbag.
Oh, its something else?
I also don't understand the bargaining power argument for developers. Do you mean the ability to lie about your sale numbers during negotiation ?
Um, how are statistics gleaned from from publicly available information within the rights of anyone to suppress?
Respect developer wishes.
But still, the data on Steamspy isn't accurate by any means if you want to calculate the revenue the company got.
You really think that's how big companies like Valve and let's say Activision behave/talk to each other?
I also don't understand the bargaining power argument for developers. Do you mean the ability to lie about your sale numbers during negotiation ?
Yeah this is what I and other posters here was thinking. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't SteamSpy use fully public data? They don't get their data from the "inside" or anything. The data is something anyone could see publicly? SteamSpy then just collects all that data into one website. If so then suppressing the data is not something SteamSpy actually has to comply with?
Is no one else going to call him out on how this site in general is obviously not for the developers? There are legitimate reasons to hide this info. You're hurting dev bargaining positions by posting it. He's a scumbag.
Yeah, it's public data that a website compiles. But it might have a negative effect on some devs and that's why they ask for them to not publish it. If you want to do that work for yourself nobody stops you..