The same one place, — times the players

Two ladders, the same hundred games

Left rail: the hundred drawn the way a numbered list draws them — one rung per place, evenly spaced. Right rail: the same hundred placed at the height their peak player count actually puts them. Every line connects one game to itself.

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Type a number of players, find its place

We drop your number into the hundred and report the place it takes. No model, no forecast — just where that many players would stand among these hundred games this week.

What one place costs, by where you stand

The ladder split into four stretches. Each row is what it takes to climb that stretch, and what one place inside it costs on average.

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Where every number on this page comes from

1. The hundred. The same official Steam most-played response the full table on this site is built from, one request, a hundred rows. This page uses one column of it: the highest number of players in each game at one time during the chart’s week.
2. The ladder. We sort those hundred by that peak, biggest first. That is our sorting, not a Steam chart. Steam’s own rank is by how much a game gets played and puts the list in a different order — which is what the other page here is about.
3. One place. The difference between two neighbours’ peaks. Nothing is modelled, smoothed or fitted.
4. Your number. Inserted into the sorted list. A number equal to a game’s peak takes the higher place, the same way a tie is scored in a race.
5. Plus ten thousand. We add ten thousand to your number and insert it again. It assumes nobody else moves, which is why it is a measure of the ladder’s shape and not a prediction.
6. The four stretches. Averages over the steps inside each one. An average hides the single widest step, which is why that step is printed on its own at the top of this page.
7. What a peak is not. One moment in one week. Not players who own the game, not hours, not money, not quality. A game with a big launch and nobody left can still sit high on this ladder for a week.