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Analysis on steam platform

This document analyzes the Steam platform, focusing on user statistics, game pricing, and gameplay behavior. It employs stratified sampling methods to estimate the number of valid users and evaluates the cost-effectiveness of games based on their price-performance ratio. The findings reveal that playing games on Steam is economical compared to other leisure activities, with a notable proportion of users engaging with free games or not purchasing any at all.

Data & Analytics◦
Analysis on Steam Platform Team 3 Jianjun Luo Sushma Tayanna Wen Liu Yousef Fadila Zhanfeng Huang
Which of these games is more affordable? 59.99$ 9.99$ 4.99$ ?
Background: Global Video Games Market is HUGE!
Why Analyzing Steam’s Data? ● Steam is the dominant platform serving at the de facto PC game distribution hub. ● Total games owned: 3 Billions! ● Real time statistics of Steam’s users and games shed lights on a market of billions.
Guiding Questions 1)How many valid users and active users there are on Steam? 2)How much time do Steam’s users spend on Steam? 3)How much money do Steam’s users spend on Steam? 4)What is the Price–performance ratio (Avg. Cost Per Hour) of Steam's games?
Sampling Method ● Steam ID is assigned a 64-bit unique ID in a sequential manner ● Steam ID space length is 462,322,592 ● Query Steam web API by a generated steam ID can get this user’s summary and game list ● Question: how to sample a certain amount of users for our analysis? Simple Random Sampling? Stratified Sampling? Stratified Sampling with Random Sampled Strata?
Estimating Total Valid Users ● Let Yi = 1 denote the i th ID is a valid user (or active users, private users...) and Yi = 0 otherwise ● N is the total number of IDs in ID space, so the variable of interest is: Y1 ,...,YN ● Let n denote the number of samples, so the variable of interest is: y1 ,..., yn ● For Stratified Sampling, let L denote the number of strata and in our case and h is a specific stratum ● For Stratified Sampling with Random Sampled Strata, let B denote total number of strata we randomly choosed in L Est. of Simple Random Sampling Est. of Stratified Sampling Est. of Stratified Sampling with Random Sampled Strata where Actually in our case, the strata are equal length and number of samples in each stratum or chosen bucket is also equal...
Variance! The variance of estimator of population total is not same Simple Random Sampling Stratified Sampling Stratified Sampling with Random Sampled Strata
Number of Invalid Users Samples in Each Stratum Split 462,322,592 (N) into 1000 Strata (L) and 150 (nh) Samples in each stratum
Stratified Sampling and Estimation of Valid users ● The insight of Stratified Sampling ○ may produce a smaller error of estimation than a simple random sample with same size ○ estimates of population parameters may be desired for subgroups of the population ● For total valid users ○ ID samples: 150,000 from 150 samples (nh) * 1000 strata (L) ○ ID space length (Nh) in each stratum: 462322 ○ Number of invalid users in samples: 17541 ○ Total invalid users: 54,064,004 ○ Total valid users: 408,258,588 ● When the stratum sample sizes are at least 30, we can use z to approximate t in t distribution ○ the 90% confidence interval is: 408,258,588 ± 559,047 ○ If samples are from uniformed sampling, it is: 408,258,588 ± 799,945 Same analysis can be performed on estimating active users, private users ...
Computational Experiments ● Distribution of Game Price ● Distribution of Number of Games Purchased by Users ● Gamer Behavior ● Price Performance Ratio (Average Cost/Hour)
Distribution of Game Price 48,213 Games in Steam 23.14% of them are free 85.23% of them are less than $10
Distribution of Game Price 99.73% less than $80
Number of Games Purchased by User most users purchase less than 25 games 45.61% of users have not purchased any games
Game Behavior - Account Value 25,260 sample users 46% of them never paid for games → $0 99.45% of them are less than $3,000
11.09% of all games bought on Steam are never played 90.07% of them are played less than 10 hours Game Behavior - Average Play Time
Cost/Hour for user: Is playing game expensive? No, for most users(98%), they spent 2.72$/hour on game playing. 7.09$/h Ticket only 2.72$/h 11.57$/h Ticket only Economical and NOT one time consumption.
Hour/User for Game: “White Elephant” VS “Worth Buying” The average playing time per game owner: <1: Unsatisfying Games (36%) 85% <10$, Average price is 7.47$ >=1: Satisfying Games (64%) 96%<10$, Average price is 11.48$ Higher Price cannot guarantee quality, but satisfying games on average sells more expensive.
Cost/Hour,User for Game Case Study: overall gameplay experience 16.489$/h 49.99$ 4 hours to finish Definitely not worth $50
0.836$/h 59.99$ Urge to play again Not a waste, even at full price. Cost/Hour,User for Game Case Study: overall gameplay experience
Back To The Question: Which game is more affordable? Price could be misleading!
Cost VS Cost-Benefit - Cost per unit of time 59.99$ 9.99$ 4.99$ 0.485$/h 1.463$/h 1.921$/h
Conclusion ● Apply the stratified sampling on Steam ID space, and compare it with simple random sampling and stratified sampling with random sampled strata ● Get the unbiased estimation of total valid user number and the its confidence interval ● 46% users only play free games or discard the account and play no games. ● Playing computer games is economical comparing to other leisure activities. ● Satisfying game --->Higher Price ● Higher price-performance ratio ---> Better overall gameplay experience
Thank You