GDC 2025 Session Viewer
How to Improve Benchmarking Using Steam Tags
Stephane Kaufmann (Data Director, PulluP Entertainment)
Pass Type: All Access Pass, Core Pass - Get your pass now!
Track: Business & Marketing
Format: Lecture
Vault Recording: TBD
Audience Level: All
On Steam, user-generated tags offer valuable information about games and market trends. When doing benchmarking on Steam games, one can use tags to investigate whether a niche market is too crowded, whether games with a specific tag are generally successful or not, and so on. However, we present in this talk issues that arise when using Steam tags straightforwardly in analyses, and we provide a method to overcome them. In particular, we take the examples of two games published by Focus Entertainment: Warhammer 40k: Space Marine 2 and MIO: Memories in Orbit. The examples will showcase how we can get actionable insights and make better strategic decisions by investigating deeper than just looking at which games have certain tags.
Takeaway
Attendees will learn about pitfalls in using Steam tags for benchmarking. They will learn about a new metric for evaluating the relevance of a tag assigned to a game. This metric helps eliminate biases and provides more detailed insights for benchmarking.
Intended Audience
This is for everyone interested in doing benchmarking on Steam games. Basic knowledge in statistics is a plus but not required.
