How the Radar list is made

Every Monday we publish the 20 unreleased Steam games that the most different Twitch channels streamed in the week that just ended. Each number has one source, our own count of Twitch, and each week keeps its own page.

What we count

Every 20 minutes our collector lists every live stream on Twitch through the official Twitch API and notes, per Twitch category, which channels were live. For each ISO week (Monday to Sunday, UTC) it keeps the number of different channels per category. That count is what the list shows as streamers.

We count a game's Twitch category, not its demo. Twitch files a demo and its full game under one category, so a streamer playing the demo and one playing a press build count the same. When a game has two categories, the one with more channels counts and the other is not added on top, because the same streamer may be in both.

Which games are in

Games that are still coming soon on Steam when the week is measured, with or without a demo. We read the status from the Steam store every week and keep that snapshot, because a game can launch the next week. A game in early access has launched and is out. Two more checks catch store pages that look unreleased but are not: a game whose release date in IGDB lies more than 90 days before the week is out (games from a Steam Next Fest participant list are exempt, since the fest only takes unreleased games), and a Twitch category that points at two different unreleased games is left out rather than guessed.

Games from large publishers and platform holders are left out unless the store tags them Indie; the list of publishers is in our code and grows when we find one we missed. That keeps most big releases off the list, but it says nothing about a studio's size. A game needs at least 5 different channels in the week to count at all.

How the list is ordered

By the number of different channels in the week, highest first. Ties go to the game that grew more since the week before, then to the one streamed on more days, then by name. Next to each game we show the change from the week before, as context.

The change is the difference in channels. A game marked new had no streams the week before. A game marked 3× or more streamers has at least 10 channels and at least 3 times as many as the week before (a week before with fewer than 3 channels counts as 3, so 1 → 4 is not 4×).

Why it is not a “rising” list (yet)

We planned to rank games by growth. Before publishing, we tried that against the plain channel count on the October 2026 Steam Next Fest: using the streams of the weeks before the fest, which ranking picks more of the 20 games streamers played most during the fest? Growth found 5 of them, the channel count found 10. It was one fest and a first, rough test, but it pointed one way, so the list ranks by streamers and calls itself that. A growth measure has to win a stricter test, fixed before the fest it is judged on, before the order changes; the new method will get its own name on this page.

Gaps and how we show them

The collector sometimes misses sweeps (a restart, a network outage). Each week shows its coverage: how many of the expected sweeps happened. Below 80% the counts run low, and no game is marked as 3× that week. When the number of sweeps differs from the week before by more than 10%, the week says that the change column compares unequal weeks.

What it cannot tell you

• Twitch only. YouTube, Kick and TikTok streams are not in these numbers.
• Streamers, not viewers or sales. A game with many small channels can rank above one with a single big one.
• Wishlists and followers are not in it: there is no official source we may use for them.
• A category mixes demo and full game, and Twitch sometimes files two games under one name.

Checks, corrections and privacy

Our agents build the list early on Monday. Before it goes up, the top 20 are checked: we ask the Steam store again whether each game is still coming soon, and hold back a game whose Twitch category has a different name than its store page or whose store page names no publisher. Fixes go into the rules in our code, never into the numbers by hand. Once a week is published its numbers stay as they were; a mistake found later gets a dated note on that week's page.

The list holds counts per game only: no streamer names, no quotes, no links to streams. A streamer who opts out also disappears from the stream topics we show for games we have a report on.

Method version: rising-v1.