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I think the pill would be somehow easier to swallow if everybody was affected equally, but I can't figure a valid explanation for why some games at the top of the "popular" listings were unaffected, despite featuring the same themes, tags, etc as other games that were affected. This does suggest some kind of mass flagging. And if there was, my question is whether this was a one time rebalance that can be reverted based on how popular the game is in the following months, or a permanent flagging, which would hinder the game's visibility no matter how much effort we put into it and how popular it is with users.

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Initially I thought it had to do with recent updates. Even the game of OP had an update when it recovered. The games on top of the list of some tags had updates no older than a week or so, when I checked. But there also were too many old games.

But whatever it was, games seem to recover to the adjustment or the bug.

around place 110 of 725

That game now is around place 75 of 726.

I have trouble believing in any kind of flagging, if games can simply recover from it. Also, I do not believe there is any kind of intentional flagging. If they "flag" anything, they de-index it. But I fully believe in the possibility that there could be circumstances in wich the algorithm would decrease the ranking. This includes missing number due to connection problems, adjustment of weighting for recurring users of a web game, random alotment of the boosts it gives away to rotate games, adjustment of weighting of minor/major updates, false triggering of some anti-ranking-cheat, correction of previuosly false attributed view count and of course, bugs.