How Rankings Work

Every registered user gets one permanent vote per game. Once you vote for a game, it counts forever toward that game's all-time ranking. No take-backs, no expiration, no daily grinding required.

Games are ranked purely by total vote count. There are no paid placements, no editorial overrides, and no hidden multipliers. If a game has more votes, it ranks higher. Period.

In addition to all-time votes, you can cast daily, weekly, and monthly votes that reset at the end of each cycle. This lets us surface which games the community is excited about right now, not just which games accumulated the most votes over years.

To prevent abuse from freshly created throwaway accounts, your account must be at least 24 hours old before you can cast period votes.

Our comparison system presents you with two games and asks a simple question: which one is better? Your choice feeds into an ELO-inspired rating system similar to how chess rankings work. Each matchup adjusts both games' scores based on the expected and actual outcomes.

This approach is inherently resistant to manipulation. You can't just spam votes for one game because every comparison involves two games. The pairwise format also powers our Similar Games recommendations, connecting players with titles they're likely to enjoy.

The Rising Games page highlights titles gaining momentum right now. We calculate a heat score using a vote velocity algorithm:

(votes_in_period / max(total_votes, 10)) × 100 × recency_boost

This formula rewards games that are receiving votes at a high rate relative to their size. The floor of 10 total votes prevents brand-new games with two votes from dominating. The recency boost gives a gentle nudge to newer entries, keeping the list fresh without overwhelming established titles.

Every day at 2:00 AM UTC, we capture a complete snapshot of all game rankings. These snapshots create a historical record of how every game's position has changed over time.

This data powers the trend indicators you see next to each game (rising, falling, or holding steady) and feeds into the developer analytics dashboard so creators can track their game's trajectory.

We take ranking integrity seriously. Every user is limited to 50 votes per day across all voting types. Accounts must be at least 24 hours old before casting period votes. We track IP addresses to detect coordinated voting campaigns.

The head-to-head comparison system is structurally resistant to review bombing because you can't target a single game with mass negative votes. Taken together, these measures ensure that rankings reflect genuine community opinion, not organized manipulation.

There are no hidden weights, no editorial picks influencing position, and no secret sauce. Every ranking you see is the direct result of community votes processed through the systems described on this page.

Featured listings and promotional placements do not affect a game's ranking position. We publish this page because you deserve to know exactly how your vote translates into the rankings you see. If we ever change these systems, we'll update this page first.