How Tier ranks games: our methodology
Tier's best games rankings order games by their critic score out of 100, imported from IGDB and Metacritic and discounted when only a few ratings back it. A game needs at least 80 external ratings to be ranked, the rankings are rebuilt every hour, and no position can be bought. Tier community grades from F to S are shown next to each game but never change the order.
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Where the data comes from
- Game information. Titles, release dates, platforms, genres, covers and summaries are imported from the public game databases IGDB and RAWG and from Steam. Play times come from HowLongToBeat.
- Critic scores. The score out of 100 is the critic aggregate published by IGDB, or the Metacritic score provided through RAWG, together with the number of ratings those databases record for the game.
- Community data. Ratings, reviews, journals and lists are written by Tier players.
How the best games rankings are built
The best games rankings exist by genre, by platform, by release year, by studio, for a few curated themes such as co-op games, and for combinations like the best RPG games on a given console. They all follow the same rules.
- The score. Games are ordered by their critic score out of 100, discounted when only a few ratings back it: a score above the catalogue average is pulled towards that average, and the fewer the ratings, the stronger the pull. From 80 ratings on, the order is simply the critic score. Ties are broken by the number of ratings, then by popularity.
- The vote threshold. A game only enters a ranking with at least 80 external ratings, so a single enthusiastic review never outranks a proven classic. When that floor would leave a ranking too short to be useful, the ranking uses a floor of 30 ratings instead, and the page says which floor it used.
- One genre per game. On the genre rankings, a game is listed in one genre only, the one that defines it best, so the same title never tops two genre charts. A combination such as a genre on one platform drops this rule only when the page would otherwise be too short.
- No ranking before a platform existed. A platform and year ranking is never published for a year before the platform's launch: a re-release does not make a PlayStation 5 game of 2015.
- Enough games to be a ranking. A genre ranking is published for search engines once it lists at least 10 games, most other rankings at 8, and a studio ranking needs 5 games released over at least 3 different years. Below that, the page can still be visited but is not offered for indexing. A ranking lists 250 games at most, 50 per page.
- Updated every hour. The rankings are rebuilt every hour, and each ranking page shows the date of its last rebuild.
Community grades from F to S
A Tier rating is a whole number from 1 to 10, one per player and per game, shown as a letter: S from 9, A from 8, B from 6.5, C from 5, D from 3 and F below. A game's community grade is the plain average of its published ratings, with no weighting.
Grades are shown next to every game in the rankings, but they never change the order. Tier only states a grade as the community's verdict once at least five players have rated the game. The scale is detailed in Tier grades explained.
Critic scores outside the rankings
The grade shown on a game page is always the Tier community's. Wherever Tier quotes a critic score out of 100 outside the rankings, in a game description or in the statistics tables, it only does so when at least 30 ratings back it.
Catalogue statistics
The statistics pages rank games by drop rate and completion rate, computed on the public library statuses collected by RAWG. Only games counted in at least 1,000 player libraries are ranked, and the journals of Tier members are not used: the community is still too small for those figures to mean anything.
What we do not do
- No paid placement. No publisher, studio or shop can pay to enter a ranking or to move up in one.
- Ads and shop links stay out of the rankings. Some pages show ads, and some links to shops are affiliate links on which Tier may earn a commission. Neither is read when a ranking or a grade is computed.
- No hand-edited scores. Critic scores and rating counts are imported as the source databases publish them, and grades are the average of what players posted.
News
Each Tier News article is written in one language. When it is available in the other languages of the site, those versions are machine translations of the original.
Corrections
Spotted a wrong release date, a missing platform or a game in the wrong genre? Write to contact@yourtier.com with the address of the page and what is wrong.
Frequently asked questions
How are the best games rankings on Tier calculated?
Each ranking orders games by their critic score out of 100 from IGDB and Metacritic, discounted when few ratings back it. A game needs at least 80 external ratings to be ranked, and a ranking that would otherwise be too short uses a floor of 30. Tier community grades are shown next to each game but never change the order.
How often are the rankings updated?
The rankings are rebuilt every hour, and every ranking page shows the date of its last rebuild. A game's position moves when the source databases update its score or its number of ratings.
Can a game pay to rank higher on Tier?
No. There is no paid or sponsored placement in any ranking. Ads and links to shops may appear on a page, but they never affect the order of a ranking or a grade.
When does Tier show a community grade?
A game's grade is the plain average of its published Tier ratings, from F to S. Tier only puts it forward as the community's verdict once at least five players have rated the game.
How do I report an error on Tier?
Write to contact@yourtier.com with the address of the page and what is wrong, for example a wrong release date, a missing platform or a game in the wrong genre.
Keep reading: the best games rankings, Tier grades explained or about Tier.