Digital distribution sales figures belong to publishers, according to Valve, allaying hopes for global digital distribution sales charts.

In an interview with MCV, Steam business development head Jason Holtman said that publishers have little reason to share the detailed data they get on sales figures from the PC digital distribution platform.

He argued that though publishers welcome collated figures on shop-based retail that indicate other publishers’ sales, they don’t demand them for the digital market.

“It proves that the needs of digital and physical are not the same. For publishers in [the digital] space, having a third party tell them how well their games sold – that isn’t as important. Because the ones that use us can log on and see their sales figures, up to date within the last five minutes.”

Asked whether he’d work with other digital distribution platforms like Metaboli and Direct2Drive to form a global downloads chart he replied, “We have those conversations about sharing data a lot ... It just isn’t as simple as ‘let’s just publish all the data’.”