The popularity charts track the top 100 most-played games on Steam in real time. Every hour, we pull live concurrent player counts directly from Valve's servers and rank them. No cached data, no estimates - these are the actual numbers of people playing right now. Position changes are calculated by comparing each hourly snapshot, so you can see at a glance which games are climbing and which are sliding.
The hourly view shows you what's happening right now. The daily view captures a snapshot at midnight UTC each day, giving you a broader perspective on how games trend over time. Both views track position changes - green arrows mean a game moved up in the rankings, red means it dropped, and an equals sign means it held steady.
Signed-in users can watch any game to build a personal chart. Your watched games appear in a dedicated view with their global ranking position - even if they're not in the top 100. It's the easiest way to keep tabs on the games you care about without scrolling through the full list every time.