How Playrivo decides

Backlog Court

Every Playrivo pick ends in one of three verdicts — buy, wait or skip. The verdict is computed by a deterministic scoring engine from your own Steam data, and it is computed before any store link exists.

What goes into a verdict

Only your own Steam data and real store facts. Nothing from your library is stored on our servers.

Your Steam library

The games you actually own, read live from your Steam profile when you ask. Login is Steam OpenID — we never see or store a password.

Your playtime

Hours played per game, so a sequel to something you bounced off is weighed differently from a series you finished.

Your achievements

Real completion rates, so a game you have already finished 100% is never suggested as your next pick.

Real prices

Current Steam store prices and discounts — and, when one is genuinely cheaper, official authorized Steam-key stores. Gray-market keys are never suggested.

The verdict is computed before a store link exists

Buy, wait or skip comes out of plain deterministic code: the same library and the same inputs always produce the same verdict, and the verdict is finished before any store link is attached. Store links — including affiliate links — sit on top of an answer that was already made, so a commission can never change it.

"Skip" is a first-class answer

Sometimes the right call is: don't buy. An untouched backlog, a series you already completed, a discount that price history says will come back — the engine is allowed and expected to tell you to skip, in plain text.

Where AI fits — and where it doesn't

There is no AI in the verdict itself. An AI assistant does two narrow jobs only: it interprets a free-text request such as "something short and story-focused", and it writes the plain-language explanation of an answer the engine already made. It can never invent games, playtimes, prices or library entries — every suggestion is validated against your real library before it renders.

Verdicts are personal, so this page shows none

The same game can be a "buy" for one library and a "skip" for another, depending on what you already own and how much you have played. That is why you will not find example verdicts on real games here — the only honest verdict is one computed against your library.

Put your backlog on trial

Connect your Steam profile — read-only, OpenID, no password — and get three picks plus one straight verdict on what to buy next.

Connect Steam

Want the raw numbers behind our public game corpus? Browse the Steam Data Report.