How LootPick scores a game

A sale price tells you what a game costs today. The LootPick Score tells you whether today is a good day to buy it. This guide explains what goes into the number, so you can decide when to trust it and when to overrule it.

The three labels

Every score from 0 to 100 maps to one of three labels:

• Buy Now: 75 or higher. The price, the reception and your own interest line up.
• Watch It: 55 to 74. A fair deal, but waiting could still pay off.
• Wait: below 55. Not a good moment, whatever the sticker says.

Games that have not released yet usually show as Not Released, unless they already have a live price and at least one rating. Games with no usable price or rating data show as No Intel. We would rather say we do not know than guess. One exception: a game that is currently free scores 100.

The LootPick Score

This is the score on your own Picks list. It is built from four equal quarters, 25 points each:

• Discount: how far below full price the best current offer is.
• Critic rating: the critic score, from 0 to 100.
• Player rating: the player score, from 0 to 100.
• Your priority: where you ranked the game in your Picks. Your number one pick counts fully, and each step down the list counts a little less.

If a game has only critic scores or only player scores, that one side takes the full 50 points instead of being punished for missing data.

Small ratings count for less

A game with a 95 from two reviews is not as safe a bet as one with an 88 from four hundred. So ratings are blended toward a neutral 70 when there are few reviews behind them. Think of it as five imaginary average reviews added to every game: they matter a lot when real reviews are scarce and almost disappear once a game has plenty.

Bonuses for a genuinely good price

• Historic low: up to 15 extra points when the price matches the lowest it has ever been, fewer when it is close. A game that has never really been discounted does not get the full bonus, because a record low from a single price is not a record.
• Cheap games: 10 extra points when the full price is $19.99 or less, since the downside of a small purchase is small.

The total is capped at 100.

Other formulas

Different people buy games for different reasons, so Premium unlocks four alternative takes that you can switch between in Settings:

• Squad Score: is it worth buying for multiplayer, co-op and social play.
• Crowd Score: does the player community trust this game.
• Deal Score: is this an especially good price right now.
• Keeper Score: is it strong, complete and priced well enough to own for good.

LP Scout Score on public pages

The score you see on a game page when you are not signed in, or for a game that is not on your Picks, is the LP Scout Score. It cannot know your priorities, so it leans on value for money, player and critic reception, the current discount and the price compared with its historic low, and it applies penalties for things like weak player reception or an older title that has barely been discounted. The same game can score differently here and on your Picks, and that is intended: one is about the game, the other is about you.

Using a score well

The score is a shortcut, not a verdict. Open any game page to see the full score breakdown, row by row, including the bonuses that did not apply. If you want a game badly, a Wait is simply a reminder that the price will probably fall. Add it to your Picks and let an alert tell you when it does.