How we measure player counts

Every 15 minutes we ask the public Steam Web API how many people are playing each tracked game. We store every measurement and publish the current number, the 24-hour peak, and a daily peak and average.

What the numbers include

• Only players on Steam. Players on consoles, mobile, and other PC launchers (Epic, Battle.net, EA app, Riot Client …) are not counted.
• Where a game has several Steam apps, such as GTA V Legacy and Enhanced, we add them together and say so on the page.
• Games that aren't on Steam, or that hide their player count, are listed without a number. We never present an estimate as a measurement.

Twitch viewers and streamers

• Every 30 minutes we read the live streams in each game's Twitch category from the official Twitch API, biggest first.
• "Watching now" adds up the viewers of the 100 biggest live channels per game. Smaller channels beyond that are not counted, so the real total is somewhat higher.
• Streamer rankings use hours watched: viewers × 30 minutes, for each measurement where the channel was among the game's top 10. Peak and average viewers come from the same measurements.

"Best games to play right now" rankings

• Each game gets a trending score from 0 to 100. It combines live Steam players and live Twitch viewers, each compared on a logarithmic scale with the biggest game for that measure, so one giant doesn't flatten everyone else.
• Games measured on only one of the two get a score from that one. Games with neither public number aren't ranked.
• The rankings reflect what people are playing and watching today. They are not reviews or editorial opinions.

Monthly rankings

Monthly pages rank games by their average daily peak during the month. A month is published once we have at least seven days of measurements.

Game facts

Facts such as platforms, price and crossplay come from official sources: the developer's website, support pages and store listings. Each fact page lists its sources and when they were last checked.