Due to changes in Steam's privacy features in April 2018, Galyonkin had anticipated he would need to shut down the service due to the inability to estimate accurate numbers from other sources, but later that month revealed a new algorithm using publicly available data, which, while having a larger number of outliers, he still believes has reasonable accuracy for use.

[1] Valve's Steam client is the largest outlet for digital sales of games for Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linux platforms.

At the time of its creation there were over 170 million Steam accounts, making the task of polling the entire list of games impractical.

The collected data is processed nightly to create visualizations used on the site, and thus offers historical trends for games as well.

[3] Galyonkin's method also polls the amount of time that each profile has played a particular game, allowing him to collect estimated playtime statistics on a per-game basis.

[4] As of September 2016, Galyonkin continues to operate the site and has plans for several major features, alongside his current position as Head of Publishing for Eastern Europe for Epic Games.

Galyonkin announced that with this change, specifically in that the default settings for all users would hide these profile elements, he would be unable to collect the necessary data needed to run Steam Spy, and plans to shut down the service.

[7][8] Later in April 2018, Galyonkin reported that he had returned to some earlier algorithms he had developed which used other publicly available data to serve as a possible replacement.

[16] Galyonkin noted there was no legal requirement for him to hide this otherwise-public and non-confidential data, and felt no developer was harmed for revealing this information.

[2] One developer from a Latin American company did tell Gamasutra that they were concerned about Steam Spy's reporting of the high sales from their game, as it would potentially lead for their offices to become a target for theft in their region.

[14] Galyonkin's data also shows that, based on a two-week period in August 2015, that Steam users spend the most time playing games published by Valve, specifically Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and Team Fortress 2.