If you're serious about running your indie game studio as a business, market research isn't optional, it's the foundation of every smart decision you'll make, from validating your game idea to pricing, positioning, and pitching to publishers. The Steam marketplace now hosts over 150,000 games, and understanding where your game fits within that landscape is the difference between setting achievable targets and throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.

But not all market research tools are created equal. Most platforms in this space serve up the same Steam data through the same lens: user-defined tags, broad genre categories, and review-based revenue estimates. The problem? These categories are chosen by developers themselves, often inconsistently, and they group wildly different games together under vague labels like "Action" or "Adventure."

In this guide, we compare six of the most popular market research tools available to indie game developers: Game Oracle, VG Insights (by Sensor Tower), Gamalytic, Steam Spy, Games-Stats, and GameDiscoverCo. We'll break down what each tool does, where it falls short, and which is best suited for developers who want real, actionable market intelligence … not just data for the sake of data.

What Makes a Good Market Research Tool for Game Developers?

Before diving into individual platforms, it's worth establishing what actually matters when you're researching the market for your next game. A good market research tool for indie developers should help you:

• Validate your game idea by showing you the opportunities in your specific niche, not just a broad genre.
• Identify your real competitors, i.e. the games that are genuinely similar to yours, not just games that share a tag.
• Set realistic targets for wishlists, sales, and revenue based on what comparable games have actually achieved.
• Price your game fairly by understanding what players in your specific market segment expect to pay.
• Spot gaps and opportunities that others have missed.

The critical question is: how does each tool define "your market"? If a platform can only group games by tags that developers have chosen themselves, you're building your business plan on an unreliable foundation. Tags are inconsistent, self-serving, and often inaccurate. A tool that can identify genuinely similar games gives you a fundamentally more reliable picture.

Game Oracle

Game Oracle approaches market research from a fundamentally different angle to every other tool on this list. Rather than relying on Steam's user-defined tags and genre categories, Game Oracle has built a map of every game on Steam that uses statistical models to group genuinely similar games together based on all the information available on a Steam store page.

This distinction matters enormously in practice. When you use Game Oracle's Data Explorer, you describe your game idea in plain English and get back a set of competitors that are actually relevant to your concept, not just a random assortment of games that happen to share the "Roguelike" or "Survival" tag. The platform analyses the full picture of each game's store page to determine similarity, which means you're comparing apples to apples rather than apples to everything vaguely fruit-shaped.

Key Tools

• Concept Compass: Validates your game idea by showing you the opportunity on Steam for your specific concept, identifies your closest competitors, suggests realistic wishlist and sales targets based on those competitors, offers pricing recommendations, and even provides marketing inspiration from successful similar games.
• Data Explorer: Lets you search using natural language rather than rigid tag filters, surfacing genuinely relevant games and insights.
• Saturation Map: An interactive visual map of every game on Steam, showing you exactly how crowded different areas of the market are and more importantly, the areas of the market that aren’t.
• Game Gap: Ready-made analysis of gaps and opportunities on Steam, helping you find underserved audiences and untapped niches.
• Bundle Builder: Optimises your Steam bundle strategy by finding the right collaboration partners.
• Revenue Calculator: Provides revenue estimates factoring in regional pricing, refunds, VAT, and Steam's cut.

Pricing

• Free Account: Acess to Saturation Map and Data Explorer with limited features.
• Individual Account: $20/month gives you access to every research tool and every feature on the platform.
• Team Accounts: For studios that want more than 5 accounts, the price of each account is determined by the number of team members who want access. An incremental discount is offered the more accounts are required.

Why It Stands Out

Game Oracle was built by Ross, a data scientist with a PhD and over seven years of experience, alongside Jennie, a marketer with over six years of cross-industry experience. The platform grew out of their own frustration when they started a game studio and found that the market research tools available to indie developers were inadequate for making real business decisions.²¹

The core innovation is the underlying map itself. By using data science to cluster every game on Steam by genuine similarity, Game Oracle solves the fundamental problem that plagues every other platform: unreliable categorisation. When you're deciding what game to make, how to price it, and what targets to set, the accuracy of your competitive set is everything. A tool that tells you your competitors are "all roguelikes" when your game is actually a very specific type of deck-building roguelike with horror elements is giving you data that will mislead your business decisions.

Game Oracle also stands apart for offering tools specifically designed around the decisions indie developers actually need to make: concept validation, gap analysis, and bundle strategy (not just dashboards of historical data).¹

Who It's Best For

Indie developers who want to make data-driven decisions about what to build, how to position it, and what realistic success looks like for their specific game concept.

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VG Insights (by Sensor Tower)

VG Insights (now part of Sensor Tower following its acquisition) is one of the more established Steam analytics platforms, with over 155,000 games in its database. It was originally built by Karl and Harry, two former indie developers who struggled to find accessible market data when they were making games themselves. ^22,23

What It Offers

VG Insights provides a broad suite of Steam data tools including Steam Analytics (aggregate charts on pricing, sales, and ratings), a Games Database, Publishers and Developers databases, Genre Analytics, and Competitive Insights. It also offers a set of Indie Tools including a pricing tool, revenue calculator, and release date analysis.

The platform allows you to filter games by genre, subgenre, Steam tags, themes, art style, game engine, game mode, and more. Revenue estimates are generated using the Boxleiter method (a review-multiplier approach), which VG Insights reports is accurate for roughly 80% of games, though it does not account for discounts, refunds, or in-game purchases.^4,19.20

Pricing

VG Insights offers a free tier with limited access. Paid plans include an Indie tier ($30/month) and a Business tier, though specific pricing is not always publicly listed as the platform now directs users to submit a request for a demo and custom datasets. Given the Sensor Tower acquisition, enterprise pricing is likely in the range typical for Sensor Tower products, which for small teams starts at $25,000–$40,000 per year.^2,3

Limitations

The biggest limitation for indie developers is that VG Insights relies entirely on Steam's tag and genre system for categorisation. When you filter for "Roguelike + Deckbuilding" games, you're getting every game where the developer chose those tags regardless of whether those games are actually similar to yours. Developers frequently mis-tag their games (either deliberately for visibility or simply because the tag system is vague), which means your competitive set can be polluted with irrelevant titles.⁴

The acquisition by Sensor Tower also raises questions about long-term pricing accessibility for small indie teams. Sensor Tower's core business is enterprise mobile analytics, and their pricing reflects that market.²

Who It's Best For

Publishers, larger studios, and analysts who need broad Steam market data and can afford enterprise-level pricing. Less suitable for small indie teams who need specific, reliable competitor identification.

Gamalytic

Gamalytic is a Steam analytics database built largely by a single developer. It has developed a following among indie developers for its wishlist estimation feature and its relatively affordable pricing.²⁴

What It Offers

Gamalytic's estimation algorithm combines multiple methods: tracking the Steam top seller rank, monitoring concurrent player counts, an advanced version of the Boxleiter review-multiplier method, and cross-referencing publicly disclosed sales data. The platform provides sales and revenue estimates, wishlist estimates, player data by country, player overlap analysis, historical data, review sentiment, and DAU/MAU figures.^5,6

A notable feature is a Chrome extension that overlays Gamalytic stats directly onto Steam store pages, showing wishlists, revenue, and sales data without leaving the store.⁷

Pricing

• Free tier: Basic access with limitations
• Starter Plan: $25/month unlocks most filters, one year of historical data, wishlist estimates, player overlaps (top 50), visual asset change history, and 2,500 API requests per day ⁶
• Professional Plan: $75/month full historical data since 2015, detailed country splits for 50 countries, player overlaps for 500 games, DAU/MAU history, DLC/IAP revenue estimates, full wishlist data, and full API access ⁶

Limitations

Like VG Insights, Gamalytic's filtering is based on Steam's user-defined tags and categories. There is no mechanism for identifying genuinely similar games based on deeper analysis of what makes games comparable. If you search for competitors to your crafting survival game, you'll get every game tagged "Crafting" and "Survival" whether that's Minecraft, Valheim, or a completely unrelated title that happens to use those tags.⁵

Who It's Best For

Solo developers and small teams who want affordable access to wishlist estimates and basic revenue data. The Chrome extension is a genuinely useful quality-of-life feature for casual research.

GameDiscoverCo

GameDiscoverCo, founded by veteran industry analyst Simon Carless, takes a distinctly different approach from the other tools on this list. Rather than focusing on Steam data analysis, GameDiscoverCo is primarily about game discovery, understanding how players find, buy, and engage with games.⁸

What It Offers

GameDiscoverCo operates on two tiers:

• Plus ($15/month for individuals): Includes the Steam Hype chart (a daily-updated scoring system for unreleased Steam games based on follower numbers, wishlist rankings, forum activity, developer track record, and community buzz), an exclusive weekly newsletter analysing major game debuts and trends, access to the data back end, and a members-only Discord.⁹
• Pro (enterprise pricing): Includes everything in Plus, plus Steam Deep Dive data with enhanced overlap/ affinity analysis, console data (PlayStation, Xbox, Switch with player estimates and country splits), full API access, and custom data support.⁸

The Steam Hype chart is particularly useful for tracking pre-release momentum. It fuses multiple signals into a single score that can predict how games are likely to perform at launch.⁹

Limitations

GameDiscoverCo excels at discovery trends and pre-release analysis, but it is not a market research tool in the traditional sense. It doesn't help you identify your specific market segment, validate a game concept, analyse saturation in your niche, or find gaps in the market.

The editorial and newsletter-driven format is valuable for staying informed about industry trends, but it doesn't replace the need for hands-on competitor analysis. The Pro tier offers deeper data including affinity and overlap, but pricing is enterprise-level and not publicly listed, putting it out of reach for most small indie teams.⁸

Like other platforms, any tag-based filtering relies on Steam's user-defined categories rather than algorithmically determined similarity.

Who It's Best For

Developers and publishers who want to stay on top of discovery trends, track pre-release hype for their own or competitor titles, and understand the broader patterns of how games succeed on Steam and consoles. Particularly valuable for timing release windows and benchmarking pre-launch momentum.

Games-Stats

Games-Stats is a relatively newer entrant in the Steam analytics space, tracking over 146,000 games and offering a mix of data tools.^10,11

What It Offers

The platform provides several useful features: a Steam Marketing Tool that lets you browse the full Steam catalogue ranked by net revenue, reviews, and price; Steam Tags Stats for analysing tag performance; a release calendar showing upcoming games and their daily follower growth, and individual game pages with revenue estimates, review scores, and follower counts.^10,11

One of its more interesting features is the trending upcoming games section, which tracks daily new followers for unreleased games; useful for gauging pre-release buzz.¹⁰

Limitations

Games-Stats offers a solid overview of the Steam catalogue, but it shares the same fundamental limitation as VG Insights and Gamalytic: categorisation is entirely based on Steam tags. There is no mechanism for identifying games that are genuinely similar to yours beyond tag matching.¹¹

The platform also appears to be more focused on browsing and monitoring than on actionable market research. It's useful for checking how a specific game is performing or spotting trending titles, but it doesn't offer tools for concept validation, gap analysis, or strategic decision-making.

Revenue estimates use review-based methods that carry the same accuracy caveats as other platforms relying on similar approaches.

Who It's Best For

Developers who want a clean, browsable interface for monitoring Steam trends, checking revenue estimates for specific games, and keeping an eye on upcoming releases. Less useful for deep competitive analysis or strategic research.

Steam Spy

Steam Spy was one of the first tools to bring Steam sales data into the public domain. Created by Sergey Galyonkin (Director of Strategy at Epic Games) in 2015, it originally worked by scraping millions of Steam user profiles to estimate game ownership, a method that was surprisingly accurate, often within 10% of actual figures.^12,13

What Happened

In April 2018, Valve changed its privacy settings to make users' game libraries hidden by default, which effectively broke Steam Spy's core data collection method. Galyonkin developed a new algorithm using alternative publicly available data, but he has openly acknowledged that the new system is far less reliable.^14,15,16

What It Offers Today

Steam Spy still operates, displaying ownership data as broad ranges alongside basic playtime data. More precise estimates and historical graphs are available to Patreon supporters. The platform itself acknowledges that "Steam Spy is often wrong" and specifically warns against trusting any figure below 30,000 owners.^16,17,18

Limitations

Steam Spy's limitations are well-documented:

• Accuracy has degraded significantly since the 2018 privacy changes.¹⁶
• Ownership ranges are so broad that they're often useless for business planning (knowing a game has "0 to 20,000" owners tells you almost nothing).¹⁸
• No market segmentation or competitor identification; it's purely a lookup tool for individual game estimates.
• No filtering by meaningful categories beyond basic tag browsing.
• The site itself warns that it is "completely unreliable for recently released games".¹⁷

Who It's Best For

Casual curiosity about rough ownership numbers for established titles. Not suitable for serious market research or business planning.

The Fundamental Problem With Tag-Based Market Research

Every tool on this list apart from Game Oracle relies, to varying degrees, on Steam's user-defined tags as the primary way to define and filter markets. This deserves scrutiny because it's the single biggest source of unreliable data in indie game market research.

Here's the problem: Steam tags are chosen by developers and the community, and they are:

• Inconsistent: Two nearly identical games might use completely different tags, while two completely different games might share the same tags.
• Strategic rather than accurate: Developers often choose tags based on which tags they think will get them visibility, not which tags most accurately describe their game.
• Too broad to be useful: Tags like "Action," "Adventure," "Indie," or "RPG" encompass tens of thousands of games that have virtually nothing in common.
• Missing nuance: A tag system can't capture the complex combination of mechanics, theme, art style, narrative approach, and player experience that actually determines whether two games compete for the same audience.

When you use a tag-based tool to find competitors for your game, you're not finding your actual competitors, you're finding games whose developers chose similar marketing keywords. The difference between those two things can be the difference between a sound business strategy and a fantasy.

Game Oracle's approach (using data science to cluster genuinely similar games together) solves this problem at the root. Instead of asking developers "what tags did you pick?", it asks "what is this game actually like?" and groups games accordingly. This means that when you look at your competitive set in Game Oracle, you're looking at games that genuinely compete for the same players, with revenue and performance data that's actually relevant to your targets.

Which Tool Should You Use?

The honest answer is that different tools serve different purposes, and many developers will benefit from using more than one. But if you're making a strategic decision about your next game, like what to build, who your competitors really are, what targets are realistic, and where the gaps in the market lie, the accuracy of your competitive set is the most important factor. And that's where the tag-based approach that dominates this space falls apart.

Game Oracle is the only platform that solves the categorisation problem at a fundamental level. By mapping every game on Steam using data science rather than developer-chosen tags, it gives you a competitive landscape that reflects reality rather than marketing choices. For indie developers who are serious about making data-driven decisions, that's the foundation everything else needs to be built on.

Use GameDiscoverCo alongside it if you want to track pre-release momentum and stay on top of discovery trends. Use Gamalytic if you want a quick, affordable way to look up ballpark revenue and wishlist figures for individual games. But when it comes to the strategic questions that define your business, Game Oracle is the tool built specifically for that job.

References

1. https://www.game-oracle.com
2. https://www.strataigize.com/blog/review-sensor-tower-features-pricing-use-cases
3. https://app.sensortower.com/vgi/pricing
4. https://app.sensortower.com/vgi/steam-analytics
5. https://gamalytic.com/about
6. https://gamalytic.com/pricing
7. https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity2D/comments/1o5fowt/a_chrome_extension_to_see_wishlists_and_revenue/
8. https://gamediscover.co/
9. https://newsletter.gamediscover.co/p/gamediscoverco-plus-subscribe-today
10. https://games-stats.com/
11. https://games-stats.com/steam/
12. https://www.pcgamesn.com/steam/steam-spy-accuracy-developers
13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Spy
14. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/04/steam-spy-announces-its-shutting-down-blames-valves-new-privacy-settings/
15. https://www.eurogamer.net/why-steam-spy-has-to-close-from-the-creator-himself
16. https://galyonk.in/whats-going-on-with-steam-spy-deed5d699233
17. https://steamspy.com/about
18. https://steamspy.com/
19. https://app2top.com/analytics/vg-insights-has-introduced-two-new-tools-they-collect-statistics-on-developers-and-publishers-on-steam-190157.html
20. https://www.reddit.com/r/IndieDev/comments/pk8cwf/data_about_every_publisher_and_developer_on_steam/
21. https://www.game-oracle.com/about
22. https://www.reddit.com/r/IndieDev/comments/mangpl/video_game_insights_releases_a_full_access_account/
23. https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/lrcimd/free_steam_data_and_insights_platform_for/
24. https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/16d70bo/i_made_a_tool_that_can_accurately_estimate_steam/