How it works

When it gets good

Steam records how many hours a reviewer had played when they wrote their review. We take the exact totals for all of a game's reviews in every language and look at how the share of positive reviews changes with playtime.

Almost every game is rated lower in the first 2–3 hours: that window includes refunds and quick first impressions. So the verdict isn't based on the dip itself, but on how deep it is and how fast the game recovers:

• Gets good — the hour by which the game has closed 80% of the gap between first-hour reviews and the opinion of players with many hours.
• Fully opens up — the same for 95% of the gap.

Where players quit

Steam publishes the share of owners who have each achievement. Many people buy a game and never launch it, so we take the most common achievement as 100%: that's roughly everyone who started playing.

“Started playing: 89% of owners” on a game page is the share of owners who have the most common achievement. About the rest, Steam tells us only one thing: they don't have it. We don't know why: some never launched the game, some quit before even the easiest achievement, and for some it wasn't recorded (offline play, mods). So “started playing” is an estimate, not an exact count.

We separate story achievements (chapters, required bosses, endings) from side ones like “collect 100 mushrooms”. If a game has several mutually exclusive endings, we say “at least X%”: some players saw a different ending.

Limitations

• Not everyone writes reviews, and players who quit are more likely to leave an angry one.
• Some games have no achievements, or none tied to the story: then the verdict is based on reviews only.
• Game images, titles and achievement names belong to their respective owners. We don't host the images: they are loaded directly from Steam's servers. Not affiliated with Valve or the game developers.
• Found a mistake? Click “Report a mistake” on the game page.