Nexus Statistics - The new Stats tab - Major DROP in April

[keithinhanoi]

I've noticed Nexus Mods has added an optional Stats tab to each mod's page, which the author can make visible to all users or only him/herself.

 

I turned it on to the public for AOS, and noticed a major dip from April to May this year in the number of downloads / endorsements. Both numbers went down by over 50%, which seemed strange.

 

So I headed over to Nexus Mods's Network Statistics page, which I've never bothered to check, to take a look at the overall trends.

 

I now see that since 2012 there has been a fairly large drop each year in the spring months.

 

Any ideas what that is caused by? Finals in school / uni / college?

 

Despite that seemingly regular drop, looking back at the download / endorsements for AOS - it actually is disturbingly low. Since October 2013, the monthly downloads has never dipped below 20k, and the total for last month was a little over 9k, and the endorsements is similarly low compared to the past year and a half. Page view is also at an all-time low for the life of the mod.

 

So does anybody have any ideas what is going on there?

 

Has any of you noticed these kinds of trends with other individual Skyrim or other mod stats?

[yuser]

May be it is GTA 5 for PC :-)

[keithinhanoi]

If true, then it will drop even more after Witcher 3 is released! ;)

[Neovalen]

If true, then it will drop even more after Witcher 3 is released! ;)

No doubt many of the people who play Skyrim will also be playing Witcher 3.

[TechAngel85]

Could be that there hasn't been an update in a while so less users need to visit.

[Guest]

Major landslide on my mod since April 1st. It looks to be the worst month ever for downloads. It cannot be my collection as the two months before that have been pretty normal. Page views and endorsements have also been melting. If I were bothered about stats, I would blame Valve for all the bad press. Yes Valve. Probably.

[kryptopyr]

The current month's numbers aren't represented accurately.  At least for mine, in one-month view, it looks like the month of April and May are identical.  I suspect that they might update the monthly view only at the end of the month (either that or they're still working out some of the kinks in the system). 

 

As far as the 'all-time' view, it looks like the stats aren't so much for the 1st of the month, as the ongoing total for the month, so May, being only half finished, is showing only about half of the downloads/endorsements of April.  As May comes to a close, I would expect the numbers to climb to something closer to previous months.  Looking at a few of my mods, I don't really see any trend where previous Mays have been low months, a few of them are actually slight peaks.

[z929669]

I've noticed Nexus Mods has added an optional Stats tab to each mod's page, which the author can make visible to all users or only him/herself.

 

I turned it on to the public for AOS, and noticed a major dip from April to May this year in the number of downloads / endorsements. Both numbers went down by over 50%, which seemed strange.

 

So I headed over to Nexus Mods's Network Statistics page, which I've never bothered to check, to take a look at the overall trends.

 

I now see that since 2012 there has been a fairly large drop each year in the spring months.

 

Any ideas what that is caused by? Finals in school / uni / college?

 

Despite that seemingly regular drop, looking back at the download / endorsements for AOS - it actually is disturbingly low. Since October 2013, the monthly downloads has never dipped below 20k, and the total for last month was a little over 9k, and the endorsements is similarly low compared to the past year and a half. Page view is also at an all-time low for the life of the mod.

 

So does anybody have any ideas what is going on there?

 

Has any of you noticed these kinds of trends with other individual Skyrim or other mod stats?

I don't see any definitive trend in their network stats other than the site became pretty popular in 2011 (and maybe Jan, see below). There is an 'iffy' trend whereby downloads dip in mid Spring and late Summer. Spring is usually associated with better weather in the temperate northern hemisphere, where most users are located. Late Summer is associated with school starting back up. These trends are not very consistent among the only three years that there is enough data to show anything. The one definite trend is peak downloads just after Christmas, which can be explained by Winter break and/or escape from January seasonal depression.

 

Dips can happen as a result of server admin activity at certain times of the year (e.g., major updates, etc) ... sometimes stats collection applications need to go down, and since those apps are not essential for site functionality, they can often be neglected.

 

As far as mod page trends, I just turned it on for STEP, and we had a big drop in April too. I attribute this trend (apparently common on a few other mod pages) to the recent paid mod debacle (Apr 23-27) coupled with what already may be lower general site usage due to nicer weather ... people were using Steam more, posting on Nexus main Page news posts, frantically searching Reddit, making whoopee, planting gardens, having picnics, and generally distracted from actual mods.

[keithinhanoi]

As far as mod page trends, I just turned it on for STEP, and we had a big drop in April too. I attribute this trend (apparently common on a few other mod pages) to the recent paid mod debacle (Apr 23-27) coupled with what already may be lower general site usage due to nicer weather ... people were using Steam more, posting on Nexus main Page news posts, frantically searching Reddit, making whoopee, planting gardens, having picnics, and generally distracted from actual mods.

 

You're really showing your age by using the euphemism "making whoopie," z, but then so am I for also knowing what it means!

 

Definitely making whoopie could a big factor for not modding - as a married man I guess I forget how important that was in my earlier years...

 

As for May dip in AOS' stats, I'm not sure that Krypto is right about the numbers for May being totaled at the end of this month - when I hover over the Y axis line, it shows the date of that stat as May 1 2015, so the drop was between the totals for the month of March and the month of April.

[A_Dim_Mismatch]

I'm going to offer a perspective from a far less talented modder who searches the Nexus for new things weekly.

 

There's hardly new mods I can find worth downloading. SkyRe isn't getting updated anymore. PerMa is too much work to run with my load order. CWO is on hiatus until Mannimarco is ready. Skywind is still far away. Shadow of Morrowind likewise. No new great armor, weapon or hair packs have been released that I can find. Good new gameplay mods are being waited on to make sure they're stable.

 

Right now it's mostly HD goodies and follower mods. I already have HD textures that look fine to me and I don't use follower mods. That doesn't leave me with much to download.