We [0] saw a similar drop happen after what appeared to be fairly aggressive adjustments made by Steam in early October. It improved throughout the first half of October but still ended up being between ~35-45% lower than what we'd have expected to see versus the curve we had been seeing prior to the changes.
I posted a comment here yesterday [1] about Steam's incentives, but it's worth posting again:
Sometimes I wonder what Steam actually optimizes for. If their algorithms always show the "best" games (ie ones that players spend hundreds++ hours playing), then I'd expect that to actually hurt Steam revenues, at least short term if not long-term as well. In theory they'd be better off marketing/optimizing to push games that 'satisfy' users (read: does not cause exodus) but that have low play-time/hours on average -- so that they can sell the player another different game that much sooner.
It's a strange set of incentives & it's hard to tell how aligned they really are (with either players or developers).
I posted a comment here yesterday [1] about Steam's incentives, but it's worth posting again:
Sometimes I wonder what Steam actually optimizes for. If their algorithms always show the "best" games (ie ones that players spend hundreds++ hours playing), then I'd expect that to actually hurt Steam revenues, at least short term if not long-term as well. In theory they'd be better off marketing/optimizing to push games that 'satisfy' users (read: does not cause exodus) but that have low play-time/hours on average -- so that they can sell the player another different game that much sooner.
It's a strange set of incentives & it's hard to tell how aligned they really are (with either players or developers).
0 - https://store.steampowered.com/app/598330/SimAirport/
1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18583254