Methodology
How We Rank Games
The full ranking recipe - written down, versioned, and open to correction. Every position on the toplist can be traced back to a rule you'll find on this page.
The ranking signal
Every position on the free toplist is decided by one number: votes received during the current calendar month. That's it. There is no secret weighting, no editorial thumb on the scale, no revenue-adjusted scoring. The game with the most monthly votes sits at position 1, the game with the second-most sits at position 2, and so on down the list.
We deliberately picked a single, simple signal because it's the only one a game owner can influence honestly: by making a game that players want to come back to and vote for. Complex multi-factor rankings tend to reward whoever best games the algorithm rather than whoever makes the best game.
Voting rules
- One vote per player, per game, per 24 hours. The cooldown starts from the exact time of your last vote, not from midnight - so if you vote at 14:00, you can vote again at 14:00 tomorrow.
- No account required. Voting is anonymous. We identify unique voters by IP address only.
- Same IP + same game = one vote per 24h, regardless of how many browsers or devices you switch to.
- Same IP + different games = allowed. A single household or office can vote for many different games each day.
- Vote-back verification. Every vote passes through reCAPTCHA v3. Scored below the threshold, the vote is silently rejected.
Monthly reset
On the 1st of every month, monthly vote counters reset to zero for every game. This gives newly listed games a fair chance at the top of the list and keeps the ranking a reflection of current momentum rather than legacy popularity. All-time totals are preserved and displayed on each game's detail page, so long-running favourites still get their credit - they just don't get a permanent lock on the top spot.
Sponsored placement
Paid placements exist and they are always clearly marked. Two paid features exist:
- Premium ($15/month): gold ribbon and a small daily vote bonus. Games with Premium still compete on the free toplist based on their vote total - the vote bonus is added to their organic votes, but it can be beaten by any game that earns more organic votes on its own.
- Promoted ($50/month): the game appears in a clearly separated "Sponsored" section above the free ranking. The Sponsored section carries a visible SPONSORED badge, does not affect the free ranking, and never contains more than 5 slots at a time.
A sponsored placement never boosts a game's ranking inside the free toplist. If a Promoted game earns lots of votes, it will also rank organically - but its position in the free list is decided purely by vote count, exactly like any other listing.
Editorial moderation
Every new submission is reviewed by a human editor within 48 hours against the criteria in our Editorial Standards. Approvals and rejections are logged, and every rejection email includes the specific reason and a link to fix it. Once approved, a listing stays on the toplist until either the owner deletes it, we receive a valid removal request, or the site fails our uptime probe for 30 consecutive days.
Anti-fraud
We take vote manipulation seriously. Signals we automatically monitor include: sudden spikes of votes from a single subnet, rotating VPN exit nodes, reCAPTCHA v3 scores below the threshold, and votes from user-agents that don't match a typical browser. Games caught manipulating votes have the offending votes deducted; repeat offenders have their listing removed and their owner account banned. There is no appeal for confirmed manipulation.
Uptime probing
Every 20 hours we make an HTTP request to each game's URL. Games that fail the probe are marked "offline" on their detail page (this does not affect their ranking short-term, since real downtime happens). If a game fails the probe for 30 consecutive days it is delisted automatically and the owner is notified by email.
Changes to this methodology
This page is versioned. When we change how the ranking works, we update this page and post a note in the blog summarising the change and why. Grandfathered rules only apply when we say so explicitly - the current version of this page is always the authoritative source.
Version 1.0 - Last reviewed: 2026-09-19