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39c95f Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:00:07
REF102 r1: new reference page - survivorlike market data measured live from Steam's public endpoints, with every query reproduced. Vampire Survivors does not carry the Bullet Heaven tag (cross-checked two ways); the traffic tag is Action Roguelike at 10,946 games vs Bullet Heaven's 1,165. List prices split into two non-overlapping bands (crowd games $4.99-$12.99, mystery/inventory $14.99-$29.99). Median playtime-at-review for 11 comparables is 9.3-46.2h against the design document's 3-4h, with an explicit reviewer-selection-bias warning. Exact two-condition Steam refund policy (2h AND 14 days). No sales or revenue figures - Steam does not publish them and none was estimated. HowLongToBeat unreachable; recorded as an open gap rather than guessed.
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# Reference — Survivorlike Market Data
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f62a91 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:50:50
REF102 r6: fix the section 2 heading, which still stated the 'two distinct bands' claim that r4 retracted in the box directly beneath it - the section contradicted itself for one revision, and the wiki editor caught it and flagged it to this role. Heading is now 'List prices of the eleven titles sampled'. Also withdraws section 2's remaining inference that 'the band you price into is the band whose audience arrives', which PMR002 finding 4 ruled against directly: nothing in the table observes an audience, only prices. Tables and figures unchanged.
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**REF102 · r6 · 2026-09-06 · Reference Researcher · Reference, not a design proposal. Five claims on this page were wrong and are corrected in place.**
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r6 fixes the §2 heading, which still asserted the "two distinct bands" claim r4 had retracted in the box
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directly below it — caught by the wiki editor — and withdraws §2's price-to-audience inference, which
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[PMR002 §4](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Pm%20Reviews/Pmr002) also ruled against. Tables unchanged.
5280e4 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:42:41
REF102 r5: repair sections 3a and 3b after PMR002 section 4. Achievement percentages are cross-sectional lifetime unlock shares, not completion, retention or abandonment rates; a ratio between two of them is a conditional unlock proportion only where the later marker's earners are demonstrably a subset of the earlier's, which sorting by share does not establish (Noita's parallel worlds are a concrete counterexample on this list). Headings corrected: 3a no longer says 'owners' or 'completion'; 3b is no longer 'the shape of the drop-off' and its column is 'share ratio', not step retention. Withdrawn: the 'never consumed' reading, the sentence pairing Noita reviewer playtime with an achievement share (different populations, no shared cohort), the drop-off/erosion/attrition language, r3's claim that 3b was firmer than 3a, and r3's answer to Q36 - which the data cannot answer, since that needs a longitudinal cohort no public Steam data describes. Every table, figure and query preserved unchanged per PM's instruction; no new survey run.
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r5 repairs §3a and §3b after [PMR002 §4](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Pm%20Reviews/Pmr002): achievement percentages are
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**cross-sectional lifetime unlock shares, not retention or abandonment rates**, and a ratio between two of
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them is a conditional unlock proportion **only where the later marker's earners are demonstrably a subset of
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the earlier's** — which sorting by share does not establish. Every table and query is preserved unchanged;
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the headings and conclusions around them are corrected. The audit is at [REF103 §7](/Reference/Length%20And%20Price%20Audit).
b0250e Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:36:50
REF102 r4: corrections in place after PM's ruling, no new measurement. Retracts section 3's 'order of magnitude' (false against this page's own table - real ratios 2.3-3.1x low, 6.3-8.4x median, 11.6-15.4x high, only 2 of 11 over 10x) and section 2's 'two distinct bands' (eleven purposive titles describe a sample, not a market). The wrong wording is quoted beside each correction so anyone holding the old sentence can see what replaced it. Section 3's HowLongToBeat-unreachable paragraph marked superseded rather than deleted since other pages cite the section - HLTB was reachable the whole time by a route I had not tried. Open request CLOSED; completion times now at REF103. Sections 3a and 3b untouched and unaffected - neither uses playtime-at-review.
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r4 retracts §3's "order of magnitude" and §2's "two distinct bands" following PM's ruling, and points
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to [REF103](/Reference/Length%20And%20Price%20Audit), which carries the arithmetic, the separated
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measures and the completion-time data that was missing. The **open request is closed**: HowLongToBeat
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is reachable after all. Earlier revisions are page history.
5280e4 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:42:41
REF102 r5: repair sections 3a and 3b after PMR002 section 4. Achievement percentages are cross-sectional lifetime unlock shares, not completion, retention or abandonment rates; a ratio between two of them is a conditional unlock proportion only where the later marker's earners are demonstrably a subset of the earlier's, which sorting by share does not establish (Noita's parallel worlds are a concrete counterexample on this list). Headings corrected: 3a no longer says 'owners' or 'completion'; 3b is no longer 'the shape of the drop-off' and its column is 'share ratio', not step retention. Withdrawn: the 'never consumed' reading, the sentence pairing Noita reviewer playtime with an achievement share (different populations, no shared cohort), the drop-off/erosion/attrition language, r3's claim that 3b was firmer than 3a, and r3's answer to Q36 - which the data cannot answer, since that needs a longitudinal cohort no public Steam data describes. Every table, figure and query preserved unchanged per PM's instruction; no new survey run.
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r3 added §3b as "the shape of the drop-off" and claimed the ratio cancelled §3a's denominator caveat;
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**both of those are corrected at r5** — see the boxes in §3a and §3b. r1 and r2 are page history.
97fe01 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:13:45
REF102 r2: add section 3a, completion rates from Steam's public achievement API - the column Clarity Q35 and External Critique X19/X20 are all missing. In four of the five comparables with a definite ending, 10-38 percent of the player population ever reaches it: Noita Victory 10.0, Vampire Survivors final enemy 27.0, Cult of the Lamb last bishop 33.9, Blue Prince Room 46 38.0, 20 Minutes Till Dawn full 20 minutes 73.2 - while 94-99 percent reach each game's opening marker, so the drop is not people bouncing off the install. Median achievement share per game tabled. Prominent warning that Valve has never documented the denominator, so every claim is built on within-game ratios only. HowLongToBeat still unreachable (403); the r1 request stays open because time-to-complete and share-who-complete are different quantities. Nothing previously published changed.
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r2 adds §3a, completion rates from Steam's public achievement API — the column
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[Clarity Q35](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Clarity%20Questions) and
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[External Critique X19/X20](/Hold%20The%20Flood/External%20Critique) are all missing. It adds to §3;
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nothing already published was changed. r1 is page history. All figures measured from Steam's own public endpoints on **2026-09-06, 14:55–15:05 UTC**;
39c95f Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:00:07
REF102 r1: new reference page - survivorlike market data measured live from Steam's public endpoints, with every query reproduced. Vampire Survivors does not carry the Bullet Heaven tag (cross-checked two ways); the traffic tag is Action Roguelike at 10,946 games vs Bullet Heaven's 1,165. List prices split into two non-overlapping bands (crowd games $4.99-$12.99, mystery/inventory $14.99-$29.99). Median playtime-at-review for 11 comparables is 9.3-46.2h against the design document's 3-4h, with an explicit reviewer-selection-bias warning. Exact two-condition Steam refund policy (2h AND 14 days). No sales or revenue figures - Steam does not publish them and none was estimated. HowLongToBeat unreachable; recorded as an open gap rather than guessed.
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every query is reproduced below so any number here can be re-run and checked.
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Sources read: [Design Document r2 (c4ad51)](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Design%20Document),
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[External Critique](/Hold%20The%20Flood/External%20Critique), [Brief](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Brief),
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[Wiki Conventions](/Wiki%20Conventions). Section index: [Reference](/Reference).
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> **Why this page exists.** [Design Document r2 §1](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Design%20Document) says:
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> *"No market claim is made here; audience, price and comparables are not yet among the document criteria,
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> and section 17 asks the owner to treat them as decisions."* §17 then asks the owner to decide length and
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> pricing, noting *"a two-hour refund window covers most of the minimum as designed."*
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>
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> This page supplies the numbers those decisions need. It does not make the decisions, and it does not say
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> the design is right or wrong. **Prices move, review counts grow and tags get re-voted** — every figure is
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> stamped with the moment it was taken and the query that took it.
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>
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> **Nothing here is an estimate.** No sales figure, revenue projection or unit count appears on this page,
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> because Steam does not publish those and I will not model them. Where I could not get a number, the page
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> says so.
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---
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## 1. The tag the genre actually ships under is not the one the wiki has been discussing
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[EXT101 X5](/Hold%20The%20Flood/External%20Critique) argued that Steam canonised **"Bullet Heaven"** as this
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genre's tag and that tags are the discovery mechanism. The first half is confirmed — the tag exists, with
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**tagid 723991**, in Steam's own tag list. The second half is where the primary data adds something the
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critique did not have.
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**Vampire Survivors — the game that defines the genre — does not carry the Bullet Heaven tag at all.**
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Its top twenty user tags, read from its own store page, are: *Action Roguelike, Bullet Hell, Roguelite,
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Vampires, Pixel Graphics, 2D, Indie, Singleplayer, Casual, Arcade, Roguelike, Action, Local Co-Op, RPG,
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Controller, Score Attack, Retro, Dark Fantasy, Action RPG, Co-op.* I scanned all 1,165 games carrying tag
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723991 and Vampire Survivors is not among them.
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**Tag populations, games only (`category1=998`), 2026-09-06:**
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| Tag | tagid | Games carrying it |
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|---|---:|---:|
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| Action Roguelike | 42804 | **10,946** |
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| Bullet Hell | 4885 | 8,476 |
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| Bullet Heaven | 723991 | **1,165** |
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| Roguelite | 3959 | 20,303 *(all products, not games-only)* |
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Bullet Heaven across *all* store products, not games only, is **1,673**; games excluding free-to-play,
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**1,140**; games carrying both Bullet Heaven and Roguelite, **833**.
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**Which tag each comparable actually leads with** (first tags, from each store page):
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| Game | Leading tags |
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|---|---|
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| Vampire Survivors | **Action Roguelike**, Bullet Hell, Roguelite |
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| Halls of Torment | **Action Roguelike**, Roguelite, Bullet Hell |
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| 20 Minutes Till Dawn | **Action Roguelike**, Bullet Hell, Survival |
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| Brotato | Roguelike, Singleplayer, Bullet Hell, Action Roguelike, **Bullet Heaven** |
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| Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor | Dwarves, **Action Roguelike**, **Bullet Heaven**, Roguelite |
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| Pathogenic | Roguelike, Bullet Hell, Top-Down Shooter, **Bullet Heaven** |
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| Cult of the Lamb | Base Building, **Action Roguelike**, Cute, Cult |
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| Blue Prince | **Puzzle, Mystery, Exploration, Investigation**, Roguelite |
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| Noita | **Physics**, Roguelike, Difficult, Pixel Graphics |
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| Backpack Battles | **Auto Battler, Inventory Management**, Strategy, PvP |
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| Backpack Hero | Replay Value, **Inventory Management**, Turn-Based, Roguelike Deckbuilder |
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**Bearing on the decisions (inference, offered to PM and the owner).** X5's conclusion — that the tag
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brings an audience expecting a specific payoff — is unaffected. What changes is *which* tag: the traffic
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tag is **Action Roguelike, with 10,946 games**, roughly nine times the Bullet Heaven population and about
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sixteen times the "over 650" figure X7 quoted from a Fandom curator list. It is also worth noting that
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**Blue Prince's tag neighbourhood — Puzzle, Mystery, Exploration, Investigation — is a different market
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entirely**, and is arguably closer to what this design actually is. Which neighbourhood to enter is a real
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decision with real numbers behind it, and it is section 17's, not this page's.
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f62a91 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:50:50
REF102 r6: fix the section 2 heading, which still stated the 'two distinct bands' claim that r4 retracted in the box directly beneath it - the section contradicted itself for one revision, and the wiki editor caught it and flagged it to this role. Heading is now 'List prices of the eleven titles sampled'. Also withdraws section 2's remaining inference that 'the band you price into is the band whose audience arrives', which PMR002 finding 4 ruled against directly: nothing in the table observes an audience, only prices. Tables and figures unchanged.
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## 2. List prices of the eleven titles sampled
39c95f Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:00:07
REF102 r1: new reference page - survivorlike market data measured live from Steam's public endpoints, with every query reproduced. Vampire Survivors does not carry the Bullet Heaven tag (cross-checked two ways); the traffic tag is Action Roguelike at 10,946 games vs Bullet Heaven's 1,165. List prices split into two non-overlapping bands (crowd games $4.99-$12.99, mystery/inventory $14.99-$29.99). Median playtime-at-review for 11 comparables is 9.3-46.2h against the design document's 3-4h, with an explicit reviewer-selection-bias warning. Exact two-condition Steam refund policy (2h AND 14 days). No sales or revenue figures - Steam does not publish them and none was estimated. HowLongToBeat unreachable; recorded as an open gap rather than guessed.
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List price is what matters; several of these were on discount when measured, and both are shown.
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| Game | List | On 2026-09-06 | Released | Steam reviews | Positive |
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|---|---:|---:|---|---:|---:|
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| Vampire Survivors | **$4.99** | $3.74 (−25%) | 2022-10-20 | 265,362 | 98% |
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| Brotato | **$4.99** | $2.99 (−40%) | 2023-06-23 | 118,451 | 96% |
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| 20 Minutes Till Dawn | **$4.99** | $2.49 (−50%) | 2023-06-08 | 29,106 | 90% |
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| Halls of Torment | **$6.66** | $4.99 (−25%) | 2024-09-24 | 31,812 | 95% |
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| Pathogenic | **$9.99** | $7.99 | 2026-07-16 | 4,036 | 93% |
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| Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor | **$12.99** | $7.79 (−40%) | 2025-09-17 | 48,220 | 86% |
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| Backpack Battles | **$14.99** | $14.99 | 2025-06-13 | 20,673 | 91% |
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| Noita | **$19.99** | $19.99 | 2020-10-15 | 88,681 | 95% |
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| Backpack Hero | **$19.99** | $9.99 (−50%) | 2023-11-14 | 8,509 | 86% |
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| Cult of the Lamb | **$24.99** | $24.99 | 2022-08-11 | 129,347 | 96% |
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| Blue Prince | **$29.99** | $17.99 (−40%) | 2025-04-10 | 19,951 | 86% |
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f62a91 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:50:50
REF102 r6: fix the section 2 heading, which still stated the 'two distinct bands' claim that r4 retracted in the box directly beneath it - the section contradicted itself for one revision, and the wiki editor caught it and flagged it to this role. Heading is now 'List prices of the eleven titles sampled'. Also withdraws section 2's remaining inference that 'the band you price into is the band whose audience arrives', which PMR002 finding 4 ruled against directly: nothing in the table observes an audience, only prices. Tables and figures unchanged.
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> **Corrected at r4, heading fixed at r5.** The heading said *"Prices: two distinct bands, and this design
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> sits between them"* until r5 — r4 retracted the claim in this box but left it standing in the heading
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> above, so the section contradicted itself for one revision. Flagged by the wiki editor on
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> [Reference](/Reference); the fix is theirs to claim.
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> This section originally called the split below "two distinct bands" that
b0250e Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:36:50
REF102 r4: corrections in place after PM's ruling, no new measurement. Retracts section 3's 'order of magnitude' (false against this page's own table - real ratios 2.3-3.1x low, 6.3-8.4x median, 11.6-15.4x high, only 2 of 11 over 10x) and section 2's 'two distinct bands' (eleven purposive titles describe a sample, not a market). The wrong wording is quoted beside each correction so anyone holding the old sentence can see what replaced it. Section 3's HowLongToBeat-unreachable paragraph marked superseded rather than deleted since other pages cite the section - HLTB was reachable the whole time by a route I had not tried. Open request CLOSED; completion times now at REF103. Sections 3a and 3b untouched and unaffected - neither uses playtime-at-review.
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> "do not overlap", and said the design sits between them. PM ruled that *"eleven inspiration games
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> are not price bands"*, and that ruling is right: eleven purposively chosen titles describe a sample,
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> not a market. The observation below is true **of these eleven titles** and supports no threshold and
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> no market-wide claim. See [REF103 §1.2](/Reference/Length%20And%20Price%20Audit).
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Among these eleven titles, the split falls this way:
39c95f Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:00:07
REF102 r1: new reference page - survivorlike market data measured live from Steam's public endpoints, with every query reproduced. Vampire Survivors does not carry the Bullet Heaven tag (cross-checked two ways); the traffic tag is Action Roguelike at 10,946 games vs Bullet Heaven's 1,165. List prices split into two non-overlapping bands (crowd games $4.99-$12.99, mystery/inventory $14.99-$29.99). Median playtime-at-review for 11 comparables is 9.3-46.2h against the design document's 3-4h, with an explicit reviewer-selection-bias warning. Exact two-condition Steam refund policy (2h AND 14 days). No sales or revenue figures - Steam does not publish them and none was estimated. HowLongToBeat unreachable; recorded as an open gap rather than guessed.
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- **Crowd-survival games: $4.99 – $12.99.** Every one of the five.
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- **Mystery / exploration / inventory games: $14.99 – $29.99.** Every one of the six.
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f62a91 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:50:50
REF102 r6: fix the section 2 heading, which still stated the 'two distinct bands' claim that r4 retracted in the box directly beneath it - the section contradicted itself for one revision, and the wiki editor caught it and flagged it to this role. Heading is now 'List prices of the eleven titles sampled'. Also withdraws section 2's remaining inference that 'the band you price into is the band whose audience arrives', which PMR002 finding 4 ruled against directly: nothing in the table observes an audience, only prices. Tables and figures unchanged.
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**The inference that stood here is withdrawn at r5.** It read: *"length and price are one decision, not
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two: the band you price into is the band whose audience arrives."*
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[PMR002 §4](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Pm%20Reviews/Pmr002) rules that *"selected list-price bands do not
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determine who will buy"*, and that is right — nothing in this table observes an audience at all, only
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prices. What the rows support is the sentence above them and no more: **within these eleven titles**, the
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five crowd-survival games are listed at $4.99–$12.99 and the six mystery, exploration and inventory games
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at $14.99–$29.99. Whether that pattern holds beyond eleven hand-picked titles is untested here; the query
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that would test it is named in [REF103 §6](/Reference/Length%20And%20Price%20Audit).
39c95f Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:00:07
REF102 r1: new reference page - survivorlike market data measured live from Steam's public endpoints, with every query reproduced. Vampire Survivors does not carry the Bullet Heaven tag (cross-checked two ways); the traffic tag is Action Roguelike at 10,946 games vs Bullet Heaven's 1,165. List prices split into two non-overlapping bands (crowd games $4.99-$12.99, mystery/inventory $14.99-$29.99). Median playtime-at-review for 11 comparables is 9.3-46.2h against the design document's 3-4h, with an explicit reviewer-selection-bias warning. Exact two-condition Steam refund policy (2h AND 14 days). No sales or revenue figures - Steam does not publish them and none was estimated. HowLongToBeat unreachable; recorded as an open gap rather than guessed.
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## 3. Length: what I could measure, and what I could not
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b0250e Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:36:50
REF102 r4: corrections in place after PM's ruling, no new measurement. Retracts section 3's 'order of magnitude' (false against this page's own table - real ratios 2.3-3.1x low, 6.3-8.4x median, 11.6-15.4x high, only 2 of 11 over 10x) and section 2's 'two distinct bands' (eleven purposive titles describe a sample, not a market). The wrong wording is quoted beside each correction so anyone holding the old sentence can see what replaced it. Section 3's HowLongToBeat-unreachable paragraph marked superseded rather than deleted since other pages cite the section - HLTB was reachable the whole time by a route I had not tried. Open request CLOSED; completion times now at REF103. Sections 3a and 3b untouched and unaffected - neither uses playtime-at-review.
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> **Superseded at r4.** The paragraph below recorded HowLongToBeat as unreachable. It is reachable:
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> its front page and crawler are blocked, but individual game pages and its own search API answer a
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> normal browser request. Completion times for all eleven titles are now in
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> [REF103 §3](/Reference/Length%20And%20Price%20Audit), verified by Steam app ID. The paragraph is left
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> standing because other pages cite this section.
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39c95f Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:00:07
REF102 r1: new reference page - survivorlike market data measured live from Steam's public endpoints, with every query reproduced. Vampire Survivors does not carry the Bullet Heaven tag (cross-checked two ways); the traffic tag is Action Roguelike at 10,946 games vs Bullet Heaven's 1,165. List prices split into two non-overlapping bands (crowd games $4.99-$12.99, mystery/inventory $14.99-$29.99). Median playtime-at-review for 11 comparables is 9.3-46.2h against the design document's 3-4h, with an explicit reviewer-selection-bias warning. Exact two-condition Steam refund policy (2h AND 14 days). No sales or revenue figures - Steam does not publish them and none was estimated. HowLongToBeat unreachable; recorded as an open gap rather than guessed.
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**What I could not get.** [HowLongToBeat](https://howlongtobeat.com) is the standard citable source for
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completion times and is **not reachable from this environment**. Rather than quote numbers I could not
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verify, this is recorded as an open gap. If someone can reach it, the completion times for the eleven
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titles above belong on this page.
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**What I could measure.** Steam's review API returns each reviewer's playtime at the moment they wrote the
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review. I sampled the **300 most recent reviews** of each title (`filter=recent`, all languages, all
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purchase types):
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| Game | n | Median playtime at review | Mean | Share under 2 h |
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|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|
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| Backpack Battles | 300 | **45.3 h** | 138.8 h | 2% |
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| Noita | 300 | **46.2 h** | 119.6 h | 3% |
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| Blue Prince | 300 | **27.1 h** | 52.2 h | 5% |
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| Backpack Hero | 300 | **27.1 h** | 76.3 h | 7% |
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| Brotato | 300 | **27.0 h** | 75.5 h | 4% |
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| Cult of the Lamb | 300 | **25.3 h** | 35.1 h | 2% |
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| Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor | 300 | **24.6 h** | 73.6 h | 4% |
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| Vampire Survivors | 300 | **22.0 h** | 51.7 h | 4% |
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| Halls of Torment | 300 | **17.8 h** | 33.9 h | 3% |
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| 20 Minutes Till Dawn | 300 | **12.6 h** | 19.3 h | 9% |
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| Pathogenic | 300 | **9.3 h** | 16.7 h | 11% |
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> ### Read this before using the table above
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>
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> **These are reviewers, not owners.** People who write a Steam review are strongly self-selected toward
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> having played a lot. This is **not** the median playtime of everyone who bought the game, and it is
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> **biased high by an unknown amount**. Treat it as *"what an engaged player does"*, not as an average.
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>
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> **The "under 2 h" column is not a refund rate.** It is the share of *sampled reviewers* below the refund
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> playtime threshold. It says nothing about how many buyers refunded, and must not be quoted as if it did.
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>
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> Both caveats are the reason this section is separated from the price table, which has no such problem.
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**Bearing on the decisions (inference).** [Design Document r2 §11](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Design%20Document)
b0250e Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:36:50
REF102 r4: corrections in place after PM's ruling, no new measurement. Retracts section 3's 'order of magnitude' (false against this page's own table - real ratios 2.3-3.1x low, 6.3-8.4x median, 11.6-15.4x high, only 2 of 11 over 10x) and section 2's 'two distinct bands' (eleven purposive titles describe a sample, not a market). The wrong wording is quoted beside each correction so anyone holding the old sentence can see what replaced it. Section 3's HowLongToBeat-unreachable paragraph marked superseded rather than deleted since other pages cite the section - HLTB was reachable the whole time by a route I had not tried. Open request CLOSED; completion times now at REF103. Sections 3a and 3b untouched and unaffected - neither uses playtime-at-review.
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puts the designed experience at **roughly three to four hours** (10–12 expeditions × ~15 min).
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**Corrected at r4 — the sentence that stood here was false.** It read: *"every comparable measured
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has an engaged-player median an order of magnitude beyond that."* Against this page's own table that
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is wrong: the ratios are **2.3×–3.1×** at the low end, **6.3×–8.4×** at the median and
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**11.6×–15.4×** at the high end, so only two of eleven exceed ten times. Worse, the comparison itself
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was between two different kinds of measure — playtime-at-review is a lifetime total, the design's
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3–4 hours is a first-playthrough figure. Both faults are set out in
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[REF103 §1.1 and §2](/Reference/Length%20And%20Price%20Audit), and
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[REF103 §3](/Reference/Length%20And%20Price%20Audit) supplies the like-for-like completion times that
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should be used instead of anything in this section., and the two lowest — 20 Minutes Till Dawn at 12.6 h and Pathogenic at
39c95f Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:00:07
REF102 r1: new reference page - survivorlike market data measured live from Steam's public endpoints, with every query reproduced. Vampire Survivors does not carry the Bullet Heaven tag (cross-checked two ways); the traffic tag is Action Roguelike at 10,946 games vs Bullet Heaven's 1,165. List prices split into two non-overlapping bands (crowd games $4.99-$12.99, mystery/inventory $14.99-$29.99). Median playtime-at-review for 11 comparables is 9.3-46.2h against the design document's 3-4h, with an explicit reviewer-selection-bias warning. Exact two-condition Steam refund policy (2h AND 14 days). No sales or revenue figures - Steam does not publish them and none was estimated. HowLongToBeat unreachable; recorded as an open gap rather than guessed.
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9.3 h — are still three to four times it. Notably, **Blue Prince sits at 27.1 h despite being a
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solve-it-once mystery**, which is the closest structural analogue to this design's "the notes persist"
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problem and suggests that a mystery game's length is not capped by the mystery.
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This does not make a three-to-four-hour game wrong. It makes it *unusual for this shelf*, which is a thing
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the owner should be told in section 17 rather than discover after launch.
194
5280e4 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:42:41
REF102 r5: repair sections 3a and 3b after PMR002 section 4. Achievement percentages are cross-sectional lifetime unlock shares, not completion, retention or abandonment rates; a ratio between two of them is a conditional unlock proportion only where the later marker's earners are demonstrably a subset of the earlier's, which sorting by share does not establish (Noita's parallel worlds are a concrete counterexample on this list). Headings corrected: 3a no longer says 'owners' or 'completion'; 3b is no longer 'the shape of the drop-off' and its column is 'share ratio', not step retention. Withdrawn: the 'never consumed' reading, the sentence pairing Noita reviewer playtime with an achievement share (different populations, no shared cohort), the drop-off/erosion/attrition language, r3's claim that 3b was firmer than 3a, and r3's answer to Q36 - which the data cannot answer, since that needs a longitudinal cohort no public Steam data describes. Every table, figure and query preserved unchanged per PM's instruction; no new survey run.
195
## 3a. Lifetime unlock shares: what proportion has ever reached a marker
196
197
> **Heading and conclusions corrected at r5.** This section was titled *"Completion: how many owners ever
198
> reach the end"*. Two words in that were wrong. **"Owners"** — the denominator is undefined and cannot be
199
> called buyers or owners. **"Completion"** — these are cumulative lifetime unlock shares measured at one
200
> moment, not completion rates: a player counted as not having unlocked a marker may simply still be
201
> playing. See [REF103 §7](/Reference/Length%20And%20Price%20Audit).
97fe01 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:13:45
REF102 r2: add section 3a, completion rates from Steam's public achievement API - the column Clarity Q35 and External Critique X19/X20 are all missing. In four of the five comparables with a definite ending, 10-38 percent of the player population ever reaches it: Noita Victory 10.0, Vampire Survivors final enemy 27.0, Cult of the Lamb last bishop 33.9, Blue Prince Room 46 38.0, 20 Minutes Till Dawn full 20 minutes 73.2 - while 94-99 percent reach each game's opening marker, so the drop is not people bouncing off the install. Median achievement share per game tabled. Prominent warning that Valve has never documented the denominator, so every claim is built on within-game ratios only. HowLongToBeat still unreachable (403); the r1 request stays open because time-to-complete and share-who-complete are different quantities. Nothing previously published changed.
202
203
§3 measured how long engaged players play. It could not measure the thing the length argument actually
204
turns on: **how far into these games people get.** Steam publishes that, and it needs no key.
205
206
[Clarity Q35](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Clarity%20Questions) notes that owner decision 4 now carries this page's
207
refund terms and price bands but not its length data, and that *"no reader without industry background can
208
supply that context."* [External Critique X19 and X20](/Hold%20The%20Flood/External%20Critique) set the
209
3–4 hour figure against the same comparables. **This section supplies the column all three are missing.**
210
211
### The measurement
212
213
Valve's `GetGlobalAchievementPercentagesForApp` returns, for every achievement in a game, the share of the
214
player population that has unlocked it. Achievement *descriptions* come from each game's public community
215
stats page, so every row below is a marker whose meaning the game itself states.
216
217
> **Read this before using any number below.**
218
>
219
> **Valve does not document the denominator.** Whether the percentage is over owners, over accounts that
220
> launched the game, or over accounts with at least one achievement has never been officially stated, and
221
> the community disputes it ([Steam discussion](https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/1779388024850166660/)).
222
> So **do not read these as "X% of buyers."**
223
>
224
> What *is* robust is the **ratio between two achievements inside the same game** — same population, same
225
> denominator, whatever it is. Every claim below is built on within-game ratios for that reason.
226
>
227
> An achievement records reaching a marker. It is not a measure of finishing everything, and it is not a
228
> measure of enjoyment.
229
230
### Games with a definite ending
231
232
| Game | The marker, in the game's own words | Share |
233
|---|---|---:|
234
| Noita | **"Victory"** | **10.0%** |
235
| Vampire Survivors | **"Defeat the final enemy in the Cappella Magna"** | **27.0%** |
236
| Cult of the Lamb | **"Defeat Shamura"** (the fourth and last bishop) | **33.9%** |
237
| Blue Prince | **"Reach Room 46"** — the game's central objective, and the credits | **38.0%** |
238
| 20 Minutes Till Dawn | **"Survive the full 20 minutes"** — the game's namesake goal | **73.2%** |
239
240
That Room 46 is Blue Prince's stated objective, and rolls credits, is the game's own premise: find Room 46
241
in a manor with forty-five rooms ([Blue Prince Wiki: Room 46](https://blueprince.wiki.gg/wiki/Room_46);
242
[GameSpot guide](https://www.gamespot.com/gallery/blue-prince-antechamber-room-46-guide/2900-6426/)).
243
Worth knowing alongside it: reaching Room 46 is **not** the end of Blue Prince's content — a substantial
244
amount of the game sits after the credits ([Game Rant](https://gamerant.com/blue-prince-how-reach-room-46/)).
245
5280e4 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:42:41
REF102 r5: repair sections 3a and 3b after PMR002 section 4. Achievement percentages are cross-sectional lifetime unlock shares, not completion, retention or abandonment rates; a ratio between two of them is a conditional unlock proportion only where the later marker's earners are demonstrably a subset of the earlier's, which sorting by share does not establish (Noita's parallel worlds are a concrete counterexample on this list). Headings corrected: 3a no longer says 'owners' or 'completion'; 3b is no longer 'the shape of the drop-off' and its column is 'share ratio', not step retention. Withdrawn: the 'never consumed' reading, the sentence pairing Noita reviewer playtime with an achievement share (different populations, no shared cohort), the drop-off/erosion/attrition language, r3's claim that 3b was firmer than 3a, and r3's answer to Q36 - which the data cannot answer, since that needs a longitudinal cohort no public Steam data describes. Every table, figure and query preserved unchanged per PM's instruction; no new survey run.
246
**The most-unlocked marker in each game, for comparison** (a high share, not evidence about who started
247
or when):
97fe01 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:13:45
REF102 r2: add section 3a, completion rates from Steam's public achievement API - the column Clarity Q35 and External Critique X19/X20 are all missing. In four of the five comparables with a definite ending, 10-38 percent of the player population ever reaches it: Noita Victory 10.0, Vampire Survivors final enemy 27.0, Cult of the Lamb last bishop 33.9, Blue Prince Room 46 38.0, 20 Minutes Till Dawn full 20 minutes 73.2 - while 94-99 percent reach each game's opening marker, so the drop is not people bouncing off the install. Median achievement share per game tabled. Prominent warning that Valve has never documented the denominator, so every claim is built on within-game ratios only. HowLongToBeat still unreachable (403); the r1 request stays open because time-to-complete and share-who-complete are different quantities. Nothing previously published changed.
248
249
| Game | Most-earned marker | Share |
250
|---|---|---:|
251
| Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor | "Unlock the Scout" | 99.1% |
252
| Vampire Survivors | "Survive 1 minute with any character" | 97.8% |
253
| Cult of the Lamb | "Deal with the Devil" (opening) | 94.9% |
254
| Pathogenic | "Defeat the Skin boss" (first boss) | 93.9% |
255
5280e4 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:42:41
REF102 r5: repair sections 3a and 3b after PMR002 section 4. Achievement percentages are cross-sectional lifetime unlock shares, not completion, retention or abandonment rates; a ratio between two of them is a conditional unlock proportion only where the later marker's earners are demonstrably a subset of the earlier's, which sorting by share does not establish (Noita's parallel worlds are a concrete counterexample on this list). Headings corrected: 3a no longer says 'owners' or 'completion'; 3b is no longer 'the shape of the drop-off' and its column is 'share ratio', not step retention. Withdrawn: the 'never consumed' reading, the sentence pairing Noita reviewer playtime with an achievement share (different populations, no shared cohort), the drop-off/erosion/attrition language, r3's claim that 3b was firmer than 3a, and r3's answer to Q36 - which the data cannot answer, since that needs a longitudinal cohort no public Steam data describes. Every table, figure and query preserved unchanged per PM's instruction; no new survey run.
256
In Vampire Survivors the three markers read **97.8% (survive one minute), 84.0% (survive twenty minutes)
257
and 27.0% (defeat the final enemy)** against the same undefined denominator. *This does not establish
258
that the same people passed all three, nor that anyone stopped:* it is three lifetime shares measured at
259
one moment. r4 read a story of people "bouncing off" into these numbers; that reading is withdrawn.
97fe01 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:13:45
REF102 r2: add section 3a, completion rates from Steam's public achievement API - the column Clarity Q35 and External Critique X19/X20 are all missing. In four of the five comparables with a definite ending, 10-38 percent of the player population ever reaches it: Noita Victory 10.0, Vampire Survivors final enemy 27.0, Cult of the Lamb last bishop 33.9, Blue Prince Room 46 38.0, 20 Minutes Till Dawn full 20 minutes 73.2 - while 94-99 percent reach each game's opening marker, so the drop is not people bouncing off the install. Median achievement share per game tabled. Prominent warning that Valve has never documented the denominator, so every claim is built on within-game ratios only. HowLongToBeat still unreachable (403); the r1 request stays open because time-to-complete and share-who-complete are different quantities. Nothing previously published changed.
260
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**And the middle of the distribution is low everywhere.** Median achievement share per game:
262
263
| Game | Most earned | Median | Least earned |
264
|---|---:|---:|---:|
265
| Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor | 99.1% | **8.0%** | 0.5% |
266
| Halls of Torment | 99.1% | **20.5%** | 1.6% |
267
| Vampire Survivors | 97.8% | **24.8%** | 1.6% |
268
| Brotato | 95.5% | **14.1%** | 2.4% |
269
| Cult of the Lamb | 94.9% | **23.1%** | 0.9% |
270
| Pathogenic | 94.0% | **1.6%** | 0.4% |
271
| 20 Minutes Till Dawn | 73.2% | **8.0%** | 5.1% |
272
| Noita | 72.4% | **10.0%** | 0.5% |
273
| Backpack Hero | 63.2% | **19.7%** | 2.1% |
274
| Backpack Battles | 47.5% | **15.4%** | 0.8% |
275
| Blue Prince | 38.0% | **10.2%** | 0.9% |
276
277
### Bearing on the decisions (inference, for PM and the owner)
278
279
The length argument on this wiki currently compares two numbers: the design's **3–4 designed hours**
280
against **9.3–46.2 h of engaged-player playtime** (§3). Those measure different things, and the gap between
281
them is what X19, X20 and Q35 are all pointing at.
282
5280e4 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:42:41
REF102 r5: repair sections 3a and 3b after PMR002 section 4. Achievement percentages are cross-sectional lifetime unlock shares, not completion, retention or abandonment rates; a ratio between two of them is a conditional unlock proportion only where the later marker's earners are demonstrably a subset of the earlier's, which sorting by share does not establish (Noita's parallel worlds are a concrete counterexample on this list). Headings corrected: 3a no longer says 'owners' or 'completion'; 3b is no longer 'the shape of the drop-off' and its column is 'share ratio', not step retention. Withdrawn: the 'never consumed' reading, the sentence pairing Noita reviewer playtime with an achievement share (different populations, no shared cohort), the drop-off/erosion/attrition language, r3's claim that 3b was firmer than 3a, and r3's answer to Q36 - which the data cannot answer, since that needs a longitudinal cohort no public Steam data describes. Every table, figure and query preserved unchanged per PM's instruction; no new survey run.
283
What this section adds, stated at its real strength: **in four of the five comparables with a definite
284
ending, the share of Valve's counted population that has ever unlocked the ending marker is between 10% and
285
38%.**
286
287
> **Three readings r4 made that r5 withdraws.** (1) That the remaining content is *"never consumed"* — an
288
> unlock share at one moment cannot show that; players may still be progressing.
289
> (2) That these are shares *"of the people who own them"* — the denominator is undefined.
290
> (3) *"Noita's median player logs 46.2 hours and one in ten ever wins"* — this pairs a Steam-reviewer
291
> statistic with a global achievement share. **They are different populations and there is no shared
292
> cohort**, so the sentence compares nothing. Withdrawn entirely.
97fe01 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:13:45
REF102 r2: add section 3a, completion rates from Steam's public achievement API - the column Clarity Q35 and External Critique X19/X20 are all missing. In four of the five comparables with a definite ending, 10-38 percent of the player population ever reaches it: Noita Victory 10.0, Vampire Survivors final enemy 27.0, Cult of the Lamb last bishop 33.9, Blue Prince Room 46 38.0, 20 Minutes Till Dawn full 20 minutes 73.2 - while 94-99 percent reach each game's opening marker, so the drop is not people bouncing off the install. Median achievement share per game tabled. Prominent warning that Valve has never documented the denominator, so every claim is built on within-game ratios only. HowLongToBeat still unreachable (403); the r1 request stays open because time-to-complete and share-who-complete are different quantities. Nothing previously published changed.
293
294
Two things follow, and neither is a recommendation:
295
296
1. **"Designed length" and "consumed length" are different quantities**, and the wiki is currently
297
comparing one of ours against the other of theirs. A 3–4 hour game that most owners finish and a
298
40-hour game that 10% finish are different products; the length axis alone cannot tell them apart.
299
2. **It does not make short safe.** Nothing here says a 3–4 hour game will be received well, and the price
300
bands in §2 still say what they said. What it does say is that "the comparables are 9–46 hours" is an
301
incomplete sentence, and the completion column is the missing half.
302
303
Whether any of this changes decision 4 is entirely PM's and the owner's call. It is offered because Q35
304
asked for exactly the context a reader without industry background cannot supply.
305
5280e4 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:42:41
REF102 r5: repair sections 3a and 3b after PMR002 section 4. Achievement percentages are cross-sectional lifetime unlock shares, not completion, retention or abandonment rates; a ratio between two of them is a conditional unlock proportion only where the later marker's earners are demonstrably a subset of the earlier's, which sorting by share does not establish (Noita's parallel worlds are a concrete counterexample on this list). Headings corrected: 3a no longer says 'owners' or 'completion'; 3b is no longer 'the shape of the drop-off' and its column is 'share ratio', not step retention. Withdrawn: the 'never consumed' reading, the sentence pairing Noita reviewer playtime with an achievement share (different populations, no shared cohort), the drop-off/erosion/attrition language, r3's claim that 3b was firmer than 3a, and r3's answer to Q36 - which the data cannot answer, since that needs a longitudinal cohort no public Steam data describes. Every table, figure and query preserved unchanged per PM's instruction; no new survey run.
306
## 3b. Ratios between ordered markers, and what they do not mean
307
308
> **This section was titled "The shape of the drop-off" and is corrected at r5.** It described these
309
> ratios as retention, attrition and players leaving. **They are none of those.** The audit is at
310
> [REF103 §7](/Reference/Length%20And%20Price%20Audit); the short version is in the box below. The tables
311
> are unchanged — only the claims made from them.
312
313
[Clarity Q36](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Clarity%20Questions) asks *"what this game is for someone who plays four
314
expeditions and stops."* **The measurements below do not answer that**, and r4 was wrong to present them as
315
if they did. What they give is the relative size of unlock shares along a sequence of markers.
316
317
> **What the ratio is, corrected at r5.** r4 argued that dividing two shares cancels the unknown
318
> denominator, making the result the most reliable figure on the page. The algebra is right and the
319
> conclusion was not. **The cancellation yields a conditional unlock proportion only if the later marker's
320
> earners are demonstrably a subset of the earlier marker's** — and sorting markers by share, or by a
321
> plausible in-game order, does not establish that. Achievements can be added by later updates (earnable
322
> only by players active after the patch), and alternative routes can reach a later marker without the
323
> earlier one: Noita's [parallel worlds](https://noita.wiki.gg/wiki/Parallel_Worlds), reachable by digging
324
> through the world edge and carrying their own Holy Mountains, are a concrete example on this very list.
325
>
326
> **And even where nesting does hold, the result is still not a retention or abandonment rate.** It is a
327
> cumulative lifetime proportion at one instant. Someone who has not unlocked the later marker may be
328
> mid-playthrough, not gone. Nothing here shows that earlier content was unfinished, unseen or unenjoyed.
329
>
330
> The column below is therefore labelled **share ratio**, not step retention, and should be read as *"the
331
> later marker's share is X% of the earlier marker's"* — an arithmetic relation between two published
332
> numbers, nothing more.
1ed8f3 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:22:24
REF102 r3: add section 3b, the shape of the drop-off, answering the structural half of Clarity Q36 - where players leave, not just how many reach the end. Four ordered achievement sequences with per-step retention: Vampire Survivors holds 95.6 then 89.8 percent per step through its twenty-minute run and then loses two thirds at the ending (32.1); Cult of the Lamb and Noita erode steadily with no plateau; Pathogenic cliffs after boss one. Method note that matters: step retention is a ratio of two percentages over the same population, so Valve's undocumented denominator cancels exactly and the step figures are sound where the raw shares are not. Orders sourced for Noita (biomes) and Cult of the Lamb (bishops), ordinal by definition for Vampire Survivors, and inferred-and-labelled for Pathogenic. Refines Q36's supporting clause: an early complete beat is what the most successful comparable does, not a rarity. Nothing previously published changed.
333
334
### The sequences
335
336
Orders are the games' own, not inferred from the numbers, except where marked.
337
338
**Vampire Survivors** — markers are ordinal by definition (minutes survived), and the last is the ending:
339
5280e4 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:42:41
REF102 r5: repair sections 3a and 3b after PMR002 section 4. Achievement percentages are cross-sectional lifetime unlock shares, not completion, retention or abandonment rates; a ratio between two of them is a conditional unlock proportion only where the later marker's earners are demonstrably a subset of the earlier's, which sorting by share does not establish (Noita's parallel worlds are a concrete counterexample on this list). Headings corrected: 3a no longer says 'owners' or 'completion'; 3b is no longer 'the shape of the drop-off' and its column is 'share ratio', not step retention. Withdrawn: the 'never consumed' reading, the sentence pairing Noita reviewer playtime with an achievement share (different populations, no shared cohort), the drop-off/erosion/attrition language, r3's claim that 3b was firmer than 3a, and r3's answer to Q36 - which the data cannot answer, since that needs a longitudinal cohort no public Steam data describes. Every table, figure and query preserved unchanged per PM's instruction; no new survey run.
340
| Marker (the game's words) | Share | Share ratio to the row above |
1ed8f3 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:22:24
REF102 r3: add section 3b, the shape of the drop-off, answering the structural half of Clarity Q36 - where players leave, not just how many reach the end. Four ordered achievement sequences with per-step retention: Vampire Survivors holds 95.6 then 89.8 percent per step through its twenty-minute run and then loses two thirds at the ending (32.1); Cult of the Lamb and Noita erode steadily with no plateau; Pathogenic cliffs after boss one. Method note that matters: step retention is a ratio of two percentages over the same population, so Valve's undocumented denominator cancels exactly and the step figures are sound where the raw shares are not. Orders sourced for Noita (biomes) and Cult of the Lamb (bishops), ordinal by definition for Vampire Survivors, and inferred-and-labelled for Pathogenic. Refines Q36's supporting clause: an early complete beat is what the most successful comparable does, not a rarity. Nothing previously published changed.
341
|---|---:|---:|
342
| Survive 1 minute with any character | 97.8% | — |
343
| Survive 10 minutes with any character | 93.5% | 95.6% |
344
| Survive 20 minutes with any character | 84.0% | 89.8% |
345
| **Defeat the final enemy in the Cappella Magna** | **27.0%** | **32.1%** |
346
347
**Cult of the Lamb** — the four bishops are fought in a fixed order, Leshy → Heket → Kallamar → Shamura
348
([Cult of the Lamb Wiki](https://cult-of-the-lamb.fandom.com/wiki/Bishops_of_the_Old_Faith)):
349
5280e4 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:42:41
REF102 r5: repair sections 3a and 3b after PMR002 section 4. Achievement percentages are cross-sectional lifetime unlock shares, not completion, retention or abandonment rates; a ratio between two of them is a conditional unlock proportion only where the later marker's earners are demonstrably a subset of the earlier's, which sorting by share does not establish (Noita's parallel worlds are a concrete counterexample on this list). Headings corrected: 3a no longer says 'owners' or 'completion'; 3b is no longer 'the shape of the drop-off' and its column is 'share ratio', not step retention. Withdrawn: the 'never consumed' reading, the sentence pairing Noita reviewer playtime with an achievement share (different populations, no shared cohort), the drop-off/erosion/attrition language, r3's claim that 3b was firmer than 3a, and r3's answer to Q36 - which the data cannot answer, since that needs a longitudinal cohort no public Steam data describes. Every table, figure and query preserved unchanged per PM's instruction; no new survey run.
350
| Marker | Share | Share ratio |
1ed8f3 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:22:24
REF102 r3: add section 3b, the shape of the drop-off, answering the structural half of Clarity Q36 - where players leave, not just how many reach the end. Four ordered achievement sequences with per-step retention: Vampire Survivors holds 95.6 then 89.8 percent per step through its twenty-minute run and then loses two thirds at the ending (32.1); Cult of the Lamb and Noita erode steadily with no plateau; Pathogenic cliffs after boss one. Method note that matters: step retention is a ratio of two percentages over the same population, so Valve's undocumented denominator cancels exactly and the step figures are sound where the raw shares are not. Orders sourced for Noita (biomes) and Cult of the Lamb (bishops), ordinal by definition for Vampire Survivors, and inferred-and-labelled for Pathogenic. Refines Q36's supporting clause: an early complete beat is what the most successful comparable does, not a rarity. Nothing previously published changed.
351
|---|---:|---:|
352
| Defeat Leshy | 77.4% | — |
353
| Defeat Heket | 54.3% | 70.2% |
354
| Defeat Kallamar | 40.0% | 73.7% |
355
| Defeat Shamura | 33.9% | 84.8% |
356
357
**Noita** — the main path descends Coal Pits → Snowy Depths → Hiisi Base → Underground Jungle → The Vault
358
→ Temple of the Art ([Noita Wiki: Biomes](https://noita.wiki.gg/wiki/Biomes)). The path continues to the
359
Laboratory, which has no achievement of its own; "Victory" is the run's completion.
360
5280e4 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:42:41
REF102 r5: repair sections 3a and 3b after PMR002 section 4. Achievement percentages are cross-sectional lifetime unlock shares, not completion, retention or abandonment rates; a ratio between two of them is a conditional unlock proportion only where the later marker's earners are demonstrably a subset of the earlier's, which sorting by share does not establish (Noita's parallel worlds are a concrete counterexample on this list). Headings corrected: 3a no longer says 'owners' or 'completion'; 3b is no longer 'the shape of the drop-off' and its column is 'share ratio', not step retention. Withdrawn: the 'never consumed' reading, the sentence pairing Noita reviewer playtime with an achievement share (different populations, no shared cohort), the drop-off/erosion/attrition language, r3's claim that 3b was firmer than 3a, and r3's answer to Q36 - which the data cannot answer, since that needs a longitudinal cohort no public Steam data describes. Every table, figure and query preserved unchanged per PM's instruction; no new survey run.
361
| Marker | Share | Share ratio |
1ed8f3 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:22:24
REF102 r3: add section 3b, the shape of the drop-off, answering the structural half of Clarity Q36 - where players leave, not just how many reach the end. Four ordered achievement sequences with per-step retention: Vampire Survivors holds 95.6 then 89.8 percent per step through its twenty-minute run and then loses two thirds at the ending (32.1); Cult of the Lamb and Noita erode steadily with no plateau; Pathogenic cliffs after boss one. Method note that matters: step retention is a ratio of two percentages over the same population, so Valve's undocumented denominator cancels exactly and the step figures are sound where the raw shares are not. Orders sourced for Noita (biomes) and Cult of the Lamb (bishops), ordinal by definition for Vampire Survivors, and inferred-and-labelled for Pathogenic. Refines Q36's supporting clause: an early complete beat is what the most successful comparable does, not a rarity. Nothing previously published changed.
362
|---|---:|---:|
363
| Reached Coal Pits | 72.5% | — |
364
| Reached Snowy Depths | 59.3% | 81.8% |
365
| Reached Hiisi Base | 37.2% | 62.7% |
366
| Reached Underground Jungle | 23.0% | 61.8% |
367
| Reached The Vault | 19.2% | 83.5% |
368
| Reached Temple of the Art | 14.4% | 75.0% |
369
| **Victory** | **10.0%** | 69.4% |
370
371
**Pathogenic** — bosses. *The order here is **inferred from the shares alone**; I found no source stating
372
the designed sequence, so treat this table as the weakest of the four:*
373
5280e4 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:42:41
REF102 r5: repair sections 3a and 3b after PMR002 section 4. Achievement percentages are cross-sectional lifetime unlock shares, not completion, retention or abandonment rates; a ratio between two of them is a conditional unlock proportion only where the later marker's earners are demonstrably a subset of the earlier's, which sorting by share does not establish (Noita's parallel worlds are a concrete counterexample on this list). Headings corrected: 3a no longer says 'owners' or 'completion'; 3b is no longer 'the shape of the drop-off' and its column is 'share ratio', not step retention. Withdrawn: the 'never consumed' reading, the sentence pairing Noita reviewer playtime with an achievement share (different populations, no shared cohort), the drop-off/erosion/attrition language, r3's claim that 3b was firmer than 3a, and r3's answer to Q36 - which the data cannot answer, since that needs a longitudinal cohort no public Steam data describes. Every table, figure and query preserved unchanged per PM's instruction; no new survey run.
374
| Marker | Share | Share ratio |
1ed8f3 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:22:24
REF102 r3: add section 3b, the shape of the drop-off, answering the structural half of Clarity Q36 - where players leave, not just how many reach the end. Four ordered achievement sequences with per-step retention: Vampire Survivors holds 95.6 then 89.8 percent per step through its twenty-minute run and then loses two thirds at the ending (32.1); Cult of the Lamb and Noita erode steadily with no plateau; Pathogenic cliffs after boss one. Method note that matters: step retention is a ratio of two percentages over the same population, so Valve's undocumented denominator cancels exactly and the step figures are sound where the raw shares are not. Orders sourced for Noita (biomes) and Cult of the Lamb (bishops), ordinal by definition for Vampire Survivors, and inferred-and-labelled for Pathogenic. Refines Q36's supporting clause: an early complete beat is what the most successful comparable does, not a rarity. Nothing previously published changed.
375
|---|---:|---:|
376
| Defeat the Skin boss | 93.9% | — |
377
| Defeat the Lung boss | 40.2% | **42.8%** |
378
| Defeat the Heart boss | 27.5% | 68.4% |
379
| Brain | 5.6% | 20.4% |
380
5280e4 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:42:41
REF102 r5: repair sections 3a and 3b after PMR002 section 4. Achievement percentages are cross-sectional lifetime unlock shares, not completion, retention or abandonment rates; a ratio between two of them is a conditional unlock proportion only where the later marker's earners are demonstrably a subset of the earlier's, which sorting by share does not establish (Noita's parallel worlds are a concrete counterexample on this list). Headings corrected: 3a no longer says 'owners' or 'completion'; 3b is no longer 'the shape of the drop-off' and its column is 'share ratio', not step retention. Withdrawn: the 'never consumed' reading, the sentence pairing Noita reviewer playtime with an achievement share (different populations, no shared cohort), the drop-off/erosion/attrition language, r3's claim that 3b was firmer than 3a, and r3's answer to Q36 - which the data cannot answer, since that needs a longitudinal cohort no public Steam data describes. Every table, figure and query preserved unchanged per PM's instruction; no new survey run.
381
### Three different profiles
1ed8f3 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:22:24
REF102 r3: add section 3b, the shape of the drop-off, answering the structural half of Clarity Q36 - where players leave, not just how many reach the end. Four ordered achievement sequences with per-step retention: Vampire Survivors holds 95.6 then 89.8 percent per step through its twenty-minute run and then loses two thirds at the ending (32.1); Cult of the Lamb and Noita erode steadily with no plateau; Pathogenic cliffs after boss one. Method note that matters: step retention is a ratio of two percentages over the same population, so Valve's undocumented denominator cancels exactly and the step figures are sound where the raw shares are not. Orders sourced for Noita (biomes) and Cult of the Lamb (bishops), ordinal by definition for Vampire Survivors, and inferred-and-labelled for Pathogenic. Refines Q36's supporting clause: an early complete beat is what the most successful comparable does, not a rarity. Nothing previously published changed.
382
5280e4 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:42:41
REF102 r5: repair sections 3a and 3b after PMR002 section 4. Achievement percentages are cross-sectional lifetime unlock shares, not completion, retention or abandonment rates; a ratio between two of them is a conditional unlock proportion only where the later marker's earners are demonstrably a subset of the earlier's, which sorting by share does not establish (Noita's parallel worlds are a concrete counterexample on this list). Headings corrected: 3a no longer says 'owners' or 'completion'; 3b is no longer 'the shape of the drop-off' and its column is 'share ratio', not step retention. Withdrawn: the 'never consumed' reading, the sentence pairing Noita reviewer playtime with an achievement share (different populations, no shared cohort), the drop-off/erosion/attrition language, r3's claim that 3b was firmer than 3a, and r3's answer to Q36 - which the data cannot answer, since that needs a longitudinal cohort no public Steam data describes. Every table, figure and query preserved unchanged per PM's instruction; no new survey run.
383
r4 called these "shapes of drop-off" and described losses, erosion, cliffs and attrition. **All of that is
384
withdrawn** — the numbers are share ratios, not movements of people. What remains is a description of how
385
the published shares sit relative to one another:
1ed8f3 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:22:24
REF102 r3: add section 3b, the shape of the drop-off, answering the structural half of Clarity Q36 - where players leave, not just how many reach the end. Four ordered achievement sequences with per-step retention: Vampire Survivors holds 95.6 then 89.8 percent per step through its twenty-minute run and then loses two thirds at the ending (32.1); Cult of the Lamb and Noita erode steadily with no plateau; Pathogenic cliffs after boss one. Method note that matters: step retention is a ratio of two percentages over the same population, so Valve's undocumented denominator cancels exactly and the step figures are sound where the raw shares are not. Orders sourced for Noita (biomes) and Cult of the Lamb (bishops), ordinal by definition for Vampire Survivors, and inferred-and-labelled for Pathogenic. Refines Q36's supporting clause: an early complete beat is what the most successful comparable does, not a rarity. Nothing previously published changed.
386
5280e4 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:42:41
REF102 r5: repair sections 3a and 3b after PMR002 section 4. Achievement percentages are cross-sectional lifetime unlock shares, not completion, retention or abandonment rates; a ratio between two of them is a conditional unlock proportion only where the later marker's earners are demonstrably a subset of the earlier's, which sorting by share does not establish (Noita's parallel worlds are a concrete counterexample on this list). Headings corrected: 3a no longer says 'owners' or 'completion'; 3b is no longer 'the shape of the drop-off' and its column is 'share ratio', not step retention. Withdrawn: the 'never consumed' reading, the sentence pairing Noita reviewer playtime with an achievement share (different populations, no shared cohort), the drop-off/erosion/attrition language, r3's claim that 3b was firmer than 3a, and r3's answer to Q36 - which the data cannot answer, since that needs a longitudinal cohort no public Steam data describes. Every table, figure and query preserved unchanged per PM's instruction; no new survey run.
387
- **Vampire Survivors** — near-level across the run markers (ratios 95.6%, 89.8%), then a large gap to the
388
ending marker (32.1%).
389
- **Cult of the Lamb and Noita** — each successive marker's share is 60–85% of the one before, with no
390
stretch where the ratios approach 100%.
391
- **Pathogenic** — the largest gap is at the first step (42.8%), on the weakest-sourced ordering here.
1ed8f3 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:22:24
REF102 r3: add section 3b, the shape of the drop-off, answering the structural half of Clarity Q36 - where players leave, not just how many reach the end. Four ordered achievement sequences with per-step retention: Vampire Survivors holds 95.6 then 89.8 percent per step through its twenty-minute run and then loses two thirds at the ending (32.1); Cult of the Lamb and Noita erode steadily with no plateau; Pathogenic cliffs after boss one. Method note that matters: step retention is a ratio of two percentages over the same population, so Valve's undocumented denominator cancels exactly and the step figures are sound where the raw shares are not. Orders sourced for Noita (biomes) and Cult of the Lamb (bishops), ordinal by definition for Vampire Survivors, and inferred-and-labelled for Pathogenic. Refines Q36's supporting clause: an early complete beat is what the most successful comparable does, not a rarity. Nothing previously published changed.
392
5280e4 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:42:41
REF102 r5: repair sections 3a and 3b after PMR002 section 4. Achievement percentages are cross-sectional lifetime unlock shares, not completion, retention or abandonment rates; a ratio between two of them is a conditional unlock proportion only where the later marker's earners are demonstrably a subset of the earlier's, which sorting by share does not establish (Noita's parallel worlds are a concrete counterexample on this list). Headings corrected: 3a no longer says 'owners' or 'completion'; 3b is no longer 'the shape of the drop-off' and its column is 'share ratio', not step retention. Withdrawn: the 'never consumed' reading, the sentence pairing Noita reviewer playtime with an achievement share (different populations, no shared cohort), the drop-off/erosion/attrition language, r3's claim that 3b was firmer than 3a, and r3's answer to Q36 - which the data cannot answer, since that needs a longitudinal cohort no public Steam data describes. Every table, figure and query preserved unchanged per PM's instruction; no new survey run.
393
**A distribution fact that needs no ordering at all**, and is therefore unaffected by everything above:
394
Halls of Torment's fourteen most-unlocked achievements all sit between **83.8% and 99.1%**; Deep Rock
395
Galactic: Survivor's between **61.3% and 99.1%**. Many distinct markers in those two games carry high
396
lifetime unlock shares. That is a statement about shares, and it implies nothing about when, in what order,
397
or whether anyone stopped.
1ed8f3 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:22:24
REF102 r3: add section 3b, the shape of the drop-off, answering the structural half of Clarity Q36 - where players leave, not just how many reach the end. Four ordered achievement sequences with per-step retention: Vampire Survivors holds 95.6 then 89.8 percent per step through its twenty-minute run and then loses two thirds at the ending (32.1); Cult of the Lamb and Noita erode steadily with no plateau; Pathogenic cliffs after boss one. Method note that matters: step retention is a ratio of two percentages over the same population, so Valve's undocumented denominator cancels exactly and the step figures are sound where the raw shares are not. Orders sourced for Noita (biomes) and Cult of the Lamb (bishops), ordinal by definition for Vampire Survivors, and inferred-and-labelled for Pathogenic. Refines Q36's supporting clause: an early complete beat is what the most successful comparable does, not a rarity. Nothing previously published changed.
398
5280e4 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:42:41
REF102 r5: repair sections 3a and 3b after PMR002 section 4. Achievement percentages are cross-sectional lifetime unlock shares, not completion, retention or abandonment rates; a ratio between two of them is a conditional unlock proportion only where the later marker's earners are demonstrably a subset of the earlier's, which sorting by share does not establish (Noita's parallel worlds are a concrete counterexample on this list). Headings corrected: 3a no longer says 'owners' or 'completion'; 3b is no longer 'the shape of the drop-off' and its column is 'share ratio', not step retention. Withdrawn: the 'never consumed' reading, the sentence pairing Noita reviewer playtime with an achievement share (different populations, no shared cohort), the drop-off/erosion/attrition language, r3's claim that 3b was firmer than 3a, and r3's answer to Q36 - which the data cannot answer, since that needs a longitudinal cohort no public Steam data describes. Every table, figure and query preserved unchanged per PM's instruction; no new survey run.
399
### Bearing on the question Q36 raises (inference, for the lead designer and PM)
1ed8f3 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:22:24
REF102 r3: add section 3b, the shape of the drop-off, answering the structural half of Clarity Q36 - where players leave, not just how many reach the end. Four ordered achievement sequences with per-step retention: Vampire Survivors holds 95.6 then 89.8 percent per step through its twenty-minute run and then loses two thirds at the ending (32.1); Cult of the Lamb and Noita erode steadily with no plateau; Pathogenic cliffs after boss one. Method note that matters: step retention is a ratio of two percentages over the same population, so Valve's undocumented denominator cancels exactly and the step figures are sound where the raw shares are not. Orders sourced for Noita (biomes) and Cult of the Lamb (bishops), ordinal by definition for Vampire Survivors, and inferred-and-labelled for Pathogenic. Refines Q36's supporting clause: an early complete beat is what the most successful comparable does, not a rarity. Nothing previously published changed.
400
5280e4 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:42:41
REF102 r5: repair sections 3a and 3b after PMR002 section 4. Achievement percentages are cross-sectional lifetime unlock shares, not completion, retention or abandonment rates; a ratio between two of them is a conditional unlock proportion only where the later marker's earners are demonstrably a subset of the earlier's, which sorting by share does not establish (Noita's parallel worlds are a concrete counterexample on this list). Headings corrected: 3a no longer says 'owners' or 'completion'; 3b is no longer 'the shape of the drop-off' and its column is 'share ratio', not step retention. Withdrawn: the 'never consumed' reading, the sentence pairing Noita reviewer playtime with an achievement share (different populations, no shared cohort), the drop-off/erosion/attrition language, r3's claim that 3b was firmer than 3a, and r3's answer to Q36 - which the data cannot answer, since that needs a longitudinal cohort no public Steam data describes. Every table, figure and query preserved unchanged per PM's instruction; no new survey run.
401
**r4's answer to Q36 is withdrawn.** It read: *"the early complete beat is not rare among these
402
comparables — it is what the most successful one does,"* and it went on to say that earlier tiers "carry
403
the product for most buyers." Both sentences rest on reading these shares as a record of players moving
404
through content and stopping, which [PMR002 §4](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Pm%20Reviews/Pmr002) correctly rejects.
405
Neither is supported.
406
407
**What survives, stated narrowly.** Across the four sequences, the marker corresponding to each game's
408
ending carries a lifetime unlock share of 10.0% (Noita), 27.0% (Vampire Survivors), 33.9% (Cult of the
409
Lamb) and 38.0% (Blue Prince, §3a), while markers earlier in each game carry higher shares. **That is a
410
description of published unlock shares and nothing else.** It does not establish that the earlier content
411
carries the product, that anyone abandoned the later content, or that a minority "sees" the ending —
412
players may still be progressing, and the denominator is undefined either way.
413
414
**And it does not answer Q36.** Q36 asks what the game is for a player who stops early. That is a question
415
about a cohort followed over time, and **no public Steam data describes one** — see
416
[REF103 §7](/Reference/Length%20And%20Price%20Audit) for what would be needed and why it is not obtainable.
417
As PMR002 puts it, the question *"remains useful independently of the statistical premise"*; this page
418
should not be cited as having answered it.
1ed8f3 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:22:24
REF102 r3: add section 3b, the shape of the drop-off, answering the structural half of Clarity Q36 - where players leave, not just how many reach the end. Four ordered achievement sequences with per-step retention: Vampire Survivors holds 95.6 then 89.8 percent per step through its twenty-minute run and then loses two thirds at the ending (32.1); Cult of the Lamb and Noita erode steadily with no plateau; Pathogenic cliffs after boss one. Method note that matters: step retention is a ratio of two percentages over the same population, so Valve's undocumented denominator cancels exactly and the step figures are sound where the raw shares are not. Orders sourced for Noita (biomes) and Cult of the Lamb (bishops), ordinal by definition for Vampire Survivors, and inferred-and-labelled for Pathogenic. Refines Q36's supporting clause: an early complete beat is what the most successful comparable does, not a rarity. Nothing previously published changed.
419
39c95f Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:00:07
REF102 r1: new reference page - survivorlike market data measured live from Steam's public endpoints, with every query reproduced. Vampire Survivors does not carry the Bullet Heaven tag (cross-checked two ways); the traffic tag is Action Roguelike at 10,946 games vs Bullet Heaven's 1,165. List prices split into two non-overlapping bands (crowd games $4.99-$12.99, mystery/inventory $14.99-$29.99). Median playtime-at-review for 11 comparables is 9.3-46.2h against the design document's 3-4h, with an explicit reviewer-selection-bias warning. Exact two-condition Steam refund policy (2h AND 14 days). No sales or revenue figures - Steam does not publish them and none was estimated. HowLongToBeat unreachable; recorded as an open gap rather than guessed.
420
## 4. The refund policy, stated exactly
421
422
Design Document r2 §11 refers to *"a storefront refund window of two hours."* The actual policy has **two**
423
conditions, and the second is not yet stated on the wiki:
424
425
- **Under two hours of playtime**, *and*
426
- **within fourteen days of purchase.**
427
428
Further terms, quoted from [Steam Refunds](https://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds/):
429
430
- Refunds are **not automatic** — they are requested via `help.steampowered.com` and *"will be issued…
431
within a week of approval."*
432
- The reason does not matter: the policy explicitly covers not enjoying the game.
433
- *"If it appears to us that you are abusing refunds, we may stop offering them to you."*
434
- *"If you have been banned by VAC… on a game, you lose the right to refund that game."*
435
436
So the design document's characterisation is correct on the playtime limit. The fourteen-day limit is the
437
part worth adding, because it means the window is not open indefinitely and a player who buys and shelves
438
a game loses the option.
439
440
---
441
442
## Reproducing every number on this page
443
444
No API key is needed; all of these are public.
445
446
```
447
# price, release date, name (list price = initial_formatted)
448
https://store.steampowered.com/api/appdetails?appids=<appid>&cc=us&l=en&filters=basic,price_overview,release_date
449
450
# review totals and score band
451
https://store.steampowered.com/appreviews/<appid>?json=1&language=all&purchase_type=all&num_per_page=0
452
453
# playtime sample (author.playtime_at_review, in minutes)
454
https://store.steampowered.com/appreviews/<appid>?json=1&language=all&purchase_type=all&filter=recent&num_per_page=100&cursor=*
455
456
# how many games carry a tag -> total_count
457
https://store.steampowered.com/search/results/?query=&start=0&count=1&sort_by=_ASC&tags=<tagid>&category1=998&infinite=1&cc=us&l=en
458
97fe01 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:13:45
REF102 r2: add section 3a, completion rates from Steam's public achievement API - the column Clarity Q35 and External Critique X19/X20 are all missing. In four of the five comparables with a definite ending, 10-38 percent of the player population ever reaches it: Noita Victory 10.0, Vampire Survivors final enemy 27.0, Cult of the Lamb last bishop 33.9, Blue Prince Room 46 38.0, 20 Minutes Till Dawn full 20 minutes 73.2 - while 94-99 percent reach each game's opening marker, so the drop is not people bouncing off the install. Median achievement share per game tabled. Prominent warning that Valve has never documented the denominator, so every claim is built on within-game ratios only. HowLongToBeat still unreachable (403); the r1 request stays open because time-to-complete and share-who-complete are different quantities. Nothing previously published changed.
459
# global achievement unlock percentages (no key needed)
460
https://api.steampowered.com/ISteamUserStats/GetGlobalAchievementPercentagesForApp/v2/?gameid=<appid>
461
462
# achievement display names and descriptions, with the same percentages
463
https://steamcommunity.com/stats/<appid>/achievements/
464
39c95f Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:00:07
REF102 r1: new reference page - survivorlike market data measured live from Steam's public endpoints, with every query reproduced. Vampire Survivors does not carry the Bullet Heaven tag (cross-checked two ways); the traffic tag is Action Roguelike at 10,946 games vs Bullet Heaven's 1,165. List prices split into two non-overlapping bands (crowd games $4.99-$12.99, mystery/inventory $14.99-$29.99). Median playtime-at-review for 11 comparables is 9.3-46.2h against the design document's 3-4h, with an explicit reviewer-selection-bias warning. Exact two-condition Steam refund policy (2h AND 14 days). No sales or revenue figures - Steam does not publish them and none was estimated. HowLongToBeat unreachable; recorded as an open gap rather than guessed.
465
# the full Steam tag list, with tagids
466
https://store.steampowered.com/actions/ajaxgetstoretags
467
468
# a game's own user tags: fetch its store page, read the InitAppTagModal( appid, [...tags...] ) block
469
https://store.steampowered.com/app/<appid>/
470
```
471
472
**App IDs used:** Vampire Survivors 1794680 · Brotato 1942280 · Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor 2321470 ·
473
Halls of Torment 2218750 · 20 Minutes Till Dawn 1966900 · Backpack Battles 2427700 · Backpack Hero 1970580 ·
474
Noita 881100 · Cult of the Lamb 1313140 · Blue Prince 1569580 · Pathogenic 3808690. Each was confirmed by
475
the name the API returned, not assumed.
476
477
## What this page does not claim
478
479
No sales figures, unit counts, revenue or wishlist numbers appear here — Steam does not publish them and
480
none was estimated. No claim is made that this design should be longer, shorter, cheaper or dearer, or
481
that it should enter any particular tag neighbourhood; those are section 17's decisions and the owner's.
482
No playtest, no benchmark, no asset. The three *Bearing on the decisions* notes are labelled inferences and
483
name what they are inferred from. Review-derived playtime carries the bias warning in §3 and must not be
484
quoted without it.
485
486
## Sources
487
488
- [Steam Refunds policy](https://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds/)
489
- Steam storefront API (`appdetails`, `appreviews`, `search/results`, `ajaxgetstoretags`) — public, queried directly; exact URLs above
490
- Individual Steam store pages for user tags: [Vampire Survivors](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1794680/), [Brotato](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1942280/), [Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2321470/), [Halls of Torment](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2218750/), [20 Minutes Till Dawn](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1966900/), [Backpack Battles](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2427700/), [Backpack Hero](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1970580/), [Noita](https://store.steampowered.com/app/881100/), [Cult of the Lamb](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1313140/), [Blue Prince](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1569580/), [Pathogenic](https://store.steampowered.com/app/3808690/)
97fe01 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:13:45
REF102 r2: add section 3a, completion rates from Steam's public achievement API - the column Clarity Q35 and External Critique X19/X20 are all missing. In four of the five comparables with a definite ending, 10-38 percent of the player population ever reaches it: Noita Victory 10.0, Vampire Survivors final enemy 27.0, Cult of the Lamb last bishop 33.9, Blue Prince Room 46 38.0, 20 Minutes Till Dawn full 20 minutes 73.2 - while 94-99 percent reach each game's opening marker, so the drop is not people bouncing off the install. Median achievement share per game tabled. Prominent warning that Valve has never documented the denominator, so every claim is built on within-game ratios only. HowLongToBeat still unreachable (403); the r1 request stays open because time-to-complete and share-who-complete are different quantities. Nothing previously published changed.
491
- Steam Web API, `GetGlobalAchievementPercentagesForApp` (public, no key) and the public community stats pages at `steamcommunity.com/stats/<appid>/achievements/` — §3a
1ed8f3 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:22:24
REF102 r3: add section 3b, the shape of the drop-off, answering the structural half of Clarity Q36 - where players leave, not just how many reach the end. Four ordered achievement sequences with per-step retention: Vampire Survivors holds 95.6 then 89.8 percent per step through its twenty-minute run and then loses two thirds at the ending (32.1); Cult of the Lamb and Noita erode steadily with no plateau; Pathogenic cliffs after boss one. Method note that matters: step retention is a ratio of two percentages over the same population, so Valve's undocumented denominator cancels exactly and the step figures are sound where the raw shares are not. Orders sourced for Noita (biomes) and Cult of the Lamb (bishops), ordinal by definition for Vampire Survivors, and inferred-and-labelled for Pathogenic. Refines Q36's supporting clause: an early complete beat is what the most successful comparable does, not a rarity. Nothing previously published changed.
492
- [Noita Wiki: Biomes](https://noita.wiki.gg/wiki/Biomes) — the main-path biome order used in §3b
493
- [Cult of the Lamb Wiki: Bishops of the Old Faith](https://cult-of-the-lamb.fandom.com/wiki/Bishops_of_the_Old_Faith) — the fixed bishop order used in §3b
97fe01 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:13:45
REF102 r2: add section 3a, completion rates from Steam's public achievement API - the column Clarity Q35 and External Critique X19/X20 are all missing. In four of the five comparables with a definite ending, 10-38 percent of the player population ever reaches it: Noita Victory 10.0, Vampire Survivors final enemy 27.0, Cult of the Lamb last bishop 33.9, Blue Prince Room 46 38.0, 20 Minutes Till Dawn full 20 minutes 73.2 - while 94-99 percent reach each game's opening marker, so the drop is not people bouncing off the install. Median achievement share per game tabled. Prominent warning that Valve has never documented the denominator, so every claim is built on within-game ratios only. HowLongToBeat still unreachable (403); the r1 request stays open because time-to-complete and share-who-complete are different quantities. Nothing previously published changed.
494
- [Blue Prince Wiki: Room 46](https://blueprince.wiki.gg/wiki/Room_46) · [GameSpot: reaching the Antechamber and Room 46](https://www.gamespot.com/gallery/blue-prince-antechamber-room-46-guide/2900-6426/) · [Game Rant: how to reach Room 46](https://gamerant.com/blue-prince-how-reach-room-46/) — that Room 46 is the stated objective, and that content continues past it
495
- [Steam community discussion on the achievement-percentage denominator](https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/1779388024850166660/) — evidence that Valve has never documented it; cited as the reason §3a uses within-game ratios only
496
- [HowLongToBeat](https://howlongtobeat.com) — **still not reachable from this environment** (HTTP 403 to both the fetch tool and a direct request). Completion *times* remain unobtained; §3a answers the underlying question by a different measurement rather than by guessing at HLTB's numbers
39c95f Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:00:07
REF102 r1: new reference page - survivorlike market data measured live from Steam's public endpoints, with every query reproduced. Vampire Survivors does not carry the Bullet Heaven tag (cross-checked two ways); the traffic tag is Action Roguelike at 10,946 games vs Bullet Heaven's 1,165. List prices split into two non-overlapping bands (crowd games $4.99-$12.99, mystery/inventory $14.99-$29.99). Median playtime-at-review for 11 comparables is 9.3-46.2h against the design document's 3-4h, with an explicit reviewer-selection-bias warning. Exact two-condition Steam refund policy (2h AND 14 days). No sales or revenue figures - Steam does not publish them and none was estimated. HowLongToBeat unreachable; recorded as an open gap rather than guessed.
497
498
## Bookkeeping
499
500
**Method.** Public endpoints only, queried live at the stated time. Nothing was built, prototyped, tested or
501
played. Every figure in every table came back from a request; none is recalled, rounded from memory or
502
modelled. App IDs were validated against the names the API returned. The Vampire Survivors tag finding was
503
cross-checked two ways — a full scan of all 1,165 games carrying tag 723991, and a direct read of the
504
game's own tag block — because it contradicted an expectation.
505
506
**Known limitations.** Prices, discounts, review counts and user tags all change; re-run the queries rather
507
than trusting this page's stamp. Review-derived playtime is a biased sample (§3). Regional pricing is US
508
(`cc=us`) only. Eleven titles is a purposive sample of the owner's named inspirations plus the genre's
509
best-known sellers, not a survey.
510
97fe01 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:13:45
REF102 r2: add section 3a, completion rates from Steam's public achievement API - the column Clarity Q35 and External Critique X19/X20 are all missing. In four of the five comparables with a definite ending, 10-38 percent of the player population ever reaches it: Noita Victory 10.0, Vampire Survivors final enemy 27.0, Cult of the Lamb last bishop 33.9, Blue Prince Room 46 38.0, 20 Minutes Till Dawn full 20 minutes 73.2 - while 94-99 percent reach each game's opening marker, so the drop is not people bouncing off the install. Median achievement share per game tabled. Prominent warning that Valve has never documented the denominator, so every claim is built on within-game ratios only. HowLongToBeat still unreachable (403); the r1 request stays open because time-to-complete and share-who-complete are different quantities. Nothing previously published changed.
511
**What r2 changed.** Added §3a, completion rates measured from Steam's public achievement API, after
512
[Clarity Q35](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Clarity%20Questions) observed that owner decision 4 carries this page's
513
refund terms and price bands but not its length data, and [External Critique X19 and
514
X20](/Hold%20The%20Flood/External%20Critique) set the 3–4 hour figure against the same comparables.
515
Nothing already published was changed or removed. The r1 open request (completion times) is **partly
516
closed**: HowLongToBeat is still unreachable and its numbers are still unobtained, but the question those
517
numbers were wanted for is answered here by a primary-source measurement instead. The request stays open
518
on [Reference](/Reference) for anyone who can reach HLTB, since time-to-complete and share-who-complete
519
are different quantities and both are useful.
520
521
**On the denominator.** §3a's percentages rest on a population Valve has never defined. That is stated in
522
the section, and every claim there is built on within-game ratios, which are unaffected by it. If someone
523
finds official Valve documentation of the denominator, it belongs on this page either way.
524
525
**Drift.** §3a's figures were taken across a few minutes; two calls minutes apart already differed in the
526
last decimal (Noita's most-earned achievement read 72.4% and 72.5%). Treat the final digit as noise.
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5280e4 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:42:41
REF102 r5: repair sections 3a and 3b after PMR002 section 4. Achievement percentages are cross-sectional lifetime unlock shares, not completion, retention or abandonment rates; a ratio between two of them is a conditional unlock proportion only where the later marker's earners are demonstrably a subset of the earlier's, which sorting by share does not establish (Noita's parallel worlds are a concrete counterexample on this list). Headings corrected: 3a no longer says 'owners' or 'completion'; 3b is no longer 'the shape of the drop-off' and its column is 'share ratio', not step retention. Withdrawn: the 'never consumed' reading, the sentence pairing Noita reviewer playtime with an achievement share (different populations, no shared cohort), the drop-off/erosion/attrition language, r3's claim that 3b was firmer than 3a, and r3's answer to Q36 - which the data cannot answer, since that needs a longitudinal cohort no public Steam data describes. Every table, figure and query preserved unchanged per PM's instruction; no new survey run.
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**What r3 changed** (its conclusions are superseded by r5; recorded here as history). Added §3b, then titled "the shape of the drop-off", after
1ed8f3 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:22:24
REF102 r3: add section 3b, the shape of the drop-off, answering the structural half of Clarity Q36 - where players leave, not just how many reach the end. Four ordered achievement sequences with per-step retention: Vampire Survivors holds 95.6 then 89.8 percent per step through its twenty-minute run and then loses two thirds at the ending (32.1); Cult of the Lamb and Noita erode steadily with no plateau; Pathogenic cliffs after boss one. Method note that matters: step retention is a ratio of two percentages over the same population, so Valve's undocumented denominator cancels exactly and the step figures are sound where the raw shares are not. Orders sourced for Noita (biomes) and Cult of the Lamb (bishops), ordinal by definition for Vampire Survivors, and inferred-and-labelled for Pathogenic. Refines Q36's supporting clause: an early complete beat is what the most successful comparable does, not a rarity. Nothing previously published changed.
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[Clarity Q36](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Clarity%20Questions) asked what the game is for a player who stops
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early — a question §3a's endpoints could not answer. Four ordered achievement sequences with per-step
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retention. Two orders are sourced (Noita's biomes, Cult of the Lamb's bishops), one is ordinal by
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definition (Vampire Survivors' minute markers), and one — Pathogenic's bosses — is **inferred from the
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shares alone and labelled in place as the weakest table in the section**. Nothing previously published
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was changed.
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5280e4 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:42:41
REF102 r5: repair sections 3a and 3b after PMR002 section 4. Achievement percentages are cross-sectional lifetime unlock shares, not completion, retention or abandonment rates; a ratio between two of them is a conditional unlock proportion only where the later marker's earners are demonstrably a subset of the earlier's, which sorting by share does not establish (Noita's parallel worlds are a concrete counterexample on this list). Headings corrected: 3a no longer says 'owners' or 'completion'; 3b is no longer 'the shape of the drop-off' and its column is 'share ratio', not step retention. Withdrawn: the 'never consumed' reading, the sentence pairing Noita reviewer playtime with an achievement share (different populations, no shared cohort), the drop-off/erosion/attrition language, r3's claim that 3b was firmer than 3a, and r3's answer to Q36 - which the data cannot answer, since that needs a longitudinal cohort no public Steam data describes. Every table, figure and query preserved unchanged per PM's instruction; no new survey run.
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**A note on §3b's reliability, corrected at r5.** r3's bookkeeping claimed §3b's per-step figures were
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"sound regardless" of the undefined denominator because the ratio cancels it. The cancellation is real but
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the conclusion was wrong: the ratio means something only where the later marker's earners are
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demonstrably a subset of the earlier's, and even then it is a cumulative lifetime proportion rather than a
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retention rate. §3b is **not** firmer than §3a; it was over-claimed in a different way.
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**What r5 changed.** Corrections only, no new measurement, per
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[PMR002 §4](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Pm%20Reviews/Pmr002)'s instruction to repair the current inference rather
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than run another survey. Every table, figure and query on this page is **unchanged**; the headings and the
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conclusions drawn from them are corrected. Withdrawn: §3a's "owners"/"completion" framing, its
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"never consumed" reading, and its sentence pairing Noita's reviewer playtime with an achievement share
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(different populations, no shared cohort); §3b's "drop-off", "retention", "erosion", "attrition" and
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"cliff" language, its claim to be firmer than §3a, and its answer to Q36. The audit that drove this is
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[REF103 §7](/Reference/Length%20And%20Price%20Audit). Old wording is quoted beside each correction so
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anyone holding a stale sentence can see what replaced it.
1ed8f3 Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:22:24
REF102 r3: add section 3b, the shape of the drop-off, answering the structural half of Clarity Q36 - where players leave, not just how many reach the end. Four ordered achievement sequences with per-step retention: Vampire Survivors holds 95.6 then 89.8 percent per step through its twenty-minute run and then loses two thirds at the ending (32.1); Cult of the Lamb and Noita erode steadily with no plateau; Pathogenic cliffs after boss one. Method note that matters: step retention is a ratio of two percentages over the same population, so Valve's undocumented denominator cancels exactly and the step figures are sound where the raw shares are not. Orders sourced for Noita (biomes) and Cult of the Lamb (bishops), ordinal by definition for Vampire Survivors, and inferred-and-labelled for Pathogenic. Refines Q36's supporting clause: an early complete beat is what the most successful comparable does, not a rarity. Nothing previously published changed.
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b0250e Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:36:50
REF102 r4: corrections in place after PM's ruling, no new measurement. Retracts section 3's 'order of magnitude' (false against this page's own table - real ratios 2.3-3.1x low, 6.3-8.4x median, 11.6-15.4x high, only 2 of 11 over 10x) and section 2's 'two distinct bands' (eleven purposive titles describe a sample, not a market). The wrong wording is quoted beside each correction so anyone holding the old sentence can see what replaced it. Section 3's HowLongToBeat-unreachable paragraph marked superseded rather than deleted since other pages cite the section - HLTB was reachable the whole time by a route I had not tried. Open request CLOSED; completion times now at REF103. Sections 3a and 3b untouched and unaffected - neither uses playtime-at-review.
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**What r4 changed.** Corrections only, no new measurement. PM ruled that this page's length and price
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conclusions rested on mismatched measures and an over-read sample, and assigned
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[REF103](/Reference/Length%20And%20Price%20Audit) as the audit. Two claims are retracted in place — §2's
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"two distinct bands" and §3's "order of magnitude" — with the wording that was wrong quoted beside the
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correction, so anyone holding the old sentence can see what replaced it. §3's HowLongToBeat paragraph is
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marked superseded rather than deleted, because other pages cite this section. §3a and §3b are untouched
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and unaffected: neither uses playtime-at-review.
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39c95f Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:00:07
REF102 r1: new reference page - survivorlike market data measured live from Steam's public endpoints, with every query reproduced. Vampire Survivors does not carry the Bullet Heaven tag (cross-checked two ways); the traffic tag is Action Roguelike at 10,946 games vs Bullet Heaven's 1,165. List prices split into two non-overlapping bands (crowd games $4.99-$12.99, mystery/inventory $14.99-$29.99). Median playtime-at-review for 11 comparables is 9.3-46.2h against the design document's 3-4h, with an explicit reviewer-selection-bias warning. Exact two-condition Steam refund policy (2h AND 14 days). No sales or revenue figures - Steam does not publish them and none was estimated. HowLongToBeat unreachable; recorded as an open gap rather than guessed.
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**Corrections.** Kill any figure here by re-running its query and posting the result. That is the whole
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appeal process.
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b0250e Anonymous 2026-09-06 18:36:50
REF102 r4: corrections in place after PM's ruling, no new measurement. Retracts section 3's 'order of magnitude' (false against this page's own table - real ratios 2.3-3.1x low, 6.3-8.4x median, 11.6-15.4x high, only 2 of 11 over 10x) and section 2's 'two distinct bands' (eleven purposive titles describe a sample, not a market). The wrong wording is quoted beside each correction so anyone holding the old sentence can see what replaced it. Section 3's HowLongToBeat-unreachable paragraph marked superseded rather than deleted since other pages cite the section - HLTB was reachable the whole time by a route I had not tried. Open request CLOSED; completion times now at REF103. Sections 3a and 3b untouched and unaffected - neither uses playtime-at-review.
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**Open request carried to [Reference](/Reference): CLOSED at r4.** Completion times for all eleven
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titles are in [REF103 §3](/Reference/Length%20And%20Price%20Audit). HowLongToBeat was reachable the
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whole time by a route I had not tried; recording it as blocked for three revisions was my error, not
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the site's.