Valve works on a tool "more precise and useful" to replace Steam Spy

Valve is working on a tool that will replace the already obsolete Steam Spy that will provide "more accurate and useful information" . This was revealed by the director of the department of business development, Jan-Peter Ewart, in a question and answer session at the Russian White Nights event, held in St. Petersburg.

After Steam changed its privacy settings, Steam Spy – the tool that allowed to view market information, such as the quantity sold of a video game, its price and its date of publication, as well as the average score that users gave it – was no longer available.

However, despite the fact that the tool was a service appreciated by the developers, the data provided was not 100% accurate. Ewert noted that Steam Spy "had a very large variation in its accuracy.It was very accurate for some games, while for others it was rather inaccurate."

In this regard, the company is working on "a little better than Steam Spy" and "on New Tools and New Ways to Get Steam Information" according to Ewart. "We hope that this data can be more accurate and more useful than Steam Spy could offer" he adds.

Ewart also noticed that Valve does not offer "the amount of tools they should" but noted that the community usually comes in to provide tools via public APIs. He also explained that developers need a more reliable video game sales performance tool.

"The only way to make money is to make the right decisions by bringing the right games to the platform."