Well, it looks like I may no longer be able to track the progress of GCA at SJGames. At least, not on any sort of fine detail level.

Steve Jackson Games has revamped their online stores, putting up a new one that combines e23 and Warehouse 23 into one storefront. This is an all new store, with new code. In doing this, they’ve removed the Hot lists, and apparently have no intention of restoring them. I find this very odd, because all the big online stores I’m aware of, from the Apple App Store to Google Play, from Amazon to RPGnow, have hot lists. Hot lists help promote the store and the current hot products, which I believe results in more sales.

So, GCA won’t be on a hot list any more, which may rather negatively impact sales. Of course, I won’t really know until my royalty statements show up for the next couple of months, since we also have to get through the new store’s shakedown period (it’s pretty buggy right now).

On top of the lack of access to daily updates of the 30-day download numbers on the Hot list, I also no longer have any way to get what my actual user rating is. I now only get some number of stars, amazingly accurate down to the half star! (That is sarcasm.)

So, I’m a bit annoyed and unhappy with this. I’ll update if things change. And I suppose I can update sales numbers based on monthly royalty statements, but that’s hardly the same to me. (And I was enjoying watching GCA’s struggle to a better rating given the big improvements in UI since the initial release years ago…)