Audience Segmentation

Is creator/partner feedback engaged more than ordinary players' — or does that vanish once you control for reach & verification?

The headline

On raw engagement, partner/creator feedback looks ~2.1× more liked than players'. But normalized per follower, ordinary players' feedback actually resonates 0.5× more — the raw signal is mostly reach, not merit. Blue-verified replies also draw ~4.7× the likes regardless of tier (an X-algorithm boost, not Epic valuing them).

🎯 The strongest signal: who Epic staff actually reply to

TierStaff replies% of staff replies % of all authorsAttention vs. their numbers
epic_staff 2995% 0.1% 72.4×
former_staff 501% 0.0% 23.3×
epic_partner 1,99836% 2.3% 15.9×
news_leaker 771% 0.1% 15.5×
player 3,04555% 65.3% 0.8×

A reply from an Epic dev is the clearest "we heard you" — stronger than likes. The last column is each tier's share of replies ÷ its share of authors: >1× = Epic engages them more than their numbers warrant.

🗣️ What each tier talks about — do creators ask for different things?

Beyond how much each tier is heard: which topics they drive. Baseline share of clustered posts — players 82.0%, creators 12.0%. The factor is a tier's share within a topic ÷ its share overall, across 60 topics (≥40 posts). >1× = that tier over-indexes here. Click any topic.

Topics creators over-index on

TopicCreator %vs baseline

Topics ordinary players over-index on

TopicPlayer %vs baseline

Avg likes per post — raw

Likes per 1k followers — reach-normalized

Engagement by tier

TierFeedback postsAvg likes Avg followersLikes / 1k followers
epic_staff 6,28540.1 25,122 1.6
epic_partner 28,18838.4 48,903 0.78
news_leaker 9,05320.7 3,781,799 0.01
player 195,11218.3 45,925 0.4

Verification control — likes by verified status

TierVerifiedPostsAvg likes
epic_partner blue 12,03771.7
epic_partner none 16,15113.5
player blue 26,60457.3
player none 168,50812.1

Caveats

  • Reach normalization uses follower counts at profile time, not at post time.
  • "Valued" here = engagement, a proxy. The stronger signal — a dev replying — is tracked via directed_at.
  • Reply latency (creators reply first) is not yet controlled.
  • Tiers cover 100% of authors; the rest are still profiling.