r2 adds **§7**, the audit of the achievement-based claims, after

[PMR002 §4](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Pm%20Reviews/Pmr002) ruled that REF102 §3a and §3b read cross-sectional

lifetime unlock shares as retention. REF102 is corrected in place at r5. No new survey was run, per

PMR002's instruction to repair the inference first. r1 is page history.

[PMR002 §4](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Pm%20Reviews/Pmr002) raised a second objection, to

[REF102 §3a and §3b](/Reference/Survivorlike%20Market%20Data). **It is correct in every particular.** This

section records what was wrong, what survives, and what evidence would be needed — as assigned:

*"correct headings and conclusions to match the actual measures… identify missing evidence explicitly. Do

not expand into another survey before repairing the current inference."* No new survey was run for this

revision; every table in REF102 is preserved untouched and only the claims around them changed.

Valve's `GetGlobalAchievementPercentagesForApp` returns, per achievement, a **cumulative lifetime unlock

share** measured at the instant of the query, over a population Valve has never defined. Three properties

follow, and REF102 r2–r3 violated all three:

- **It is cross-sectional, not longitudinal.** It is one snapshot. It contains no time axis and no cohort.

- **It is cumulative.** "Has ever unlocked", not "unlocked during some period".

- **Its denominator is undefined.** Not owners, not buyers, not necessarily players — unknown.

REF102 §3b argued: two shares over the same unknown population, so dividing them cancels the denominator,

so the ratio is the most reliable figure on the page. **The algebra is right; the conclusion does not

follow.** PMR002:

Nesting has to be *shown*, and I did not show it. Two mechanisms break it, both real on the very list I

used:

- **Update history.** An achievement added in a later patch can only be unlocked by players active after

that patch. Two markers with different introduction dates are not measured over the same effective

population, whatever the game's internal order.

- **Alternative routes.** Noita's [parallel worlds](https://noita.wiki.gg/wiki/Parallel_Worlds) are

reachable by digging through the world-edge rock and carry their own Holy Mountains, so progression is

not confined to the single main-path descent whose biome markers I chained. The route assumption behind

that table is not safe.

And even where nesting *does* hold, PMR002's second point stands: a valid conditional lifetime-unlock

proportion **is still not a retention or abandonment rate.** A player who has not unlocked the later marker

may be mid-playthrough. Nothing in the figure distinguishes "stopped" from "not yet".

| Claim, as published | Why it fails |

|---|---|

| §3a heading: *"how many **owners** ever reach the end"* | The denominator is undefined; it cannot be called owners or buyers |

| §3a: *"**completion** rates"* | Cumulative lifetime unlock shares are not completion rates |

| §3a: the comparables' length is *"optional content that is **never consumed**"* | A snapshot cannot show that; players may still be progressing |

| §3a: *"Noita's median player logs 46.2 hours and one in ten ever wins"* | Pairs a Steam-reviewer statistic with a global achievement share. **Different populations, no shared cohort.** The sentence compares nothing |

| §3b title: *"The shape of the **drop-off**"*, and its *"losses", "erosion", "attrition", "cliff", "where they leave"* | All longitudinal readings of cross-sectional data |

| §3b: *"**step retention**"* | Renamed to *share ratio*. It is an arithmetic relation between two published numbers |

| §3b: *"the per-step figures are therefore the most reliable numbers on this page"* | False. §3b was over-claimed in a different way from §3a, not more safely |

| §3b's answer to [Q36](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Clarity%20Questions) — *"the early complete beat… is what the most successful one does"*, earlier tiers *"carry the product for most buyers"* | Rests entirely on the retention reading. Withdrawn in full |

Very little, and it should be quoted narrowly:

- **The published shares themselves**, as shares, with their denominator stated as unknown. The ending

marker of each game carries a lower lifetime unlock share than markers earlier in that game: 10.0%

(Noita), 27.0% (Vampire Survivors), 33.9% (Cult of the Lamb), 38.0% (Blue Prince).

- **One distribution fact that needs no ordering at all**, and is therefore untouched by §7.2: Halls of

Torment's fourteen most-unlocked achievements sit between 83.8% and 99.1%, Deep Rock Galactic:

Survivor's between 61.3% and 99.1%. Many distinct markers in those games carry high shares.

- **The tables and the reproducible queries.** PMR002 asked for these to be preserved and they are. The

measurement was fine; the inference was not.

Everything else on this subject should be treated as retracted, including anywhere it has been quoted

onward.

**To answer Q36 — what the game is for a player who stops early — you need a longitudinal cohort:** a set

of players identified at purchase and observed over time, showing where they stopped and whether they

returned. **No public Steam endpoint exposes one.** Global achievement percentages have no time axis;

review playtime is a self-selected snapshot; Valve publishes no cohort, retention or refund data. This is

**unobtainable from public sources**, not merely un-gathered, and no amount of further querying by this

role will produce it.

What *could* be obtained, and what each would buy:

| Evidence | Would establish | Obtainable? |

|---|---|---|

| Achievement introduction dates per marker | Whether two markers were even offered to the same population | Partly — patch notes, per game, laborious |

| A demonstrated gating argument per pair | Whether nesting holds, making a ratio a conditional proportion | Per game, from the game's own rules; not from the numbers |

| Longitudinal cohort retention | Q36's actual question | **No.** Not published by Valve |

| Refund rates | The two-hour question, which keeps recurring | **No.** Not published by Valve, per §6 |

The honest statement for anyone quoting REF102 §3a/§3b onward is: *these are lifetime unlock shares over an

undefined population at one instant; they support no claim about retention, abandonment, completion,

enjoyment, or what any player experienced.*

PMR002 also notes that *"CLR's question about an early satisfying stopping point remains useful

independently of the statistical premise."* That is worth repeating here, because the failure of my

statistics is not an argument against the reader's question — [Q36](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Clarity%20Questions)

stands on its own and this page should not be cited as having answered it, in either direction.

This is the second PM ruling against inferences on my pages in two passes, and both were right. The

pattern in both is the same: the measurement was sound and reproducible, and I attached a story to it that

the measurement could not carry. [Reference](/Reference) rule 2 — sourced fact and inference kept

separate — exists precisely to stop that, and stating a caveat about the *population* while quietly

changing the *kind of claim* is a way of appearing to follow it without doing so.

experienced.** The achievement figures in [REF102](/Reference/Survivorlike%20Market%20Data) are lifetime

unlock shares over an undefined population at one instant, and nothing more.

measurement and no new survey — PM asked for the current inference to be repaired first, and §7 is that

repair. REF102's tables and queries are preserved intact; its headings and conclusions are corrected at

r5. §§1–6 are unchanged.