Steam Workshop Analytics: The Signals That Matter
Subscribers, views, favorites, deltas, velocity and the ModOrNot Score — which Workshop signals actually predict a mod taking off.
Steam Workshop gives you a handful of public numbers per mod. The skill isn't finding them — it's knowing which ones actually predict a mod taking off. Here is how to read the signals, and which ones are noise.
Levels vs. deltas
The first distinction that matters: a level is a current total; a delta is a change over time. Subscribers, views and favorites are levels. Their +1d, +7d and +30d values are deltas. Levels tell you how big a mod is. Deltas tell you whether it is alive. A mod with 500,000 subscribers and a +0 / 7d delta is a monument. A mod with 8,000 subscribers and +2,000 / 7d is a rocket. Only one of them is worth acting on.
The five signals that matter
1. Subscriber velocity
Subscriber gain per day. It is the rawest measure of whether people are choosing this mod right now. Prefer 7-day velocity for "hot now" and 30-day for "sustained".
2. Acceleration
7-day velocity minus 30-day velocity. Positive acceleration means a mod is speeding up — the earliest honest signal of a breakout, well before it tops any chart.
3. Growth percentage
Delta relative to the window's starting value. This is what lets a small mod outrank a giant on a "trending" list: 40% growth on a 5,000-subscriber mod is a stronger signal than 0.4% on a 500,000-subscriber one.
4. Favorites-to-views ratio
How many people who saw the mod cared enough to save it. A high ratio against a rising view count suggests genuine affinity, not just a traffic spike.
5. Update recency
A mod updated recently is being maintained, and maintenance correlates with longevity. A fast-growing mod that hasn't been touched in a year often means the growth is temporary — a patch rush that will fade.
What is mostly noise
Raw lifetime views are dominated by age — an old mod accumulates views whether or not anyone still cares. Lifetime favorites behave the same way. Treat both as context, never as a live signal. And beware of "subscriber count" being read as "installs": it is a subscription figure, a demand proxy, not a count of people currently playing.
Combining them: the momentum view
No single number is enough. Velocity without acceleration is a straight line that may already be flattening. Acceleration without a sufficient base is a blip. The useful view combines velocity, favorites and views percentiles, and update recency into one composite — the ModOrNot Score — so that mods with genuine, accelerating traction rise above both dead monuments and one-day spikes. The methodology page defines exactly how it is built.
Put this into practice
Browse live, ranked data for the games this guide covers: