Anyone who logs into Steam from today will notice that it looks very different. Valve has updated the platform with more options for personalisation and customisation; allowing users to select what they want to see from the huge number of releases that appear on Steam every day. New discovery options and curated game lists are also making an appearance now; which should make it easier to find interesting new games.
The Steam Discovery Queue is meant to be a faster way to scroll through new releases. It simply allows users to cycle through new releases and see what is new. From the Discovery Queue users can choose to add games to the wishlist, follow the game in the Steam community, or choose to ignore any updates about the game. It’s a little slower than the scrolling updates that used to dominate the Steam store, but hopefully this will use some sort of metrics to bring games that people should be playing to the front of the line.
Curated game lists are another new thing that is appearing. For individuals, this is just a way of creating a list of games that they think people should be buying; possibly as part of a community building exercise. However, for organisations this is a way of collecting their games or official recommendations in one place. eSports announcer and Youtube personality Total Biscuit has already provided his list of curated games, and so have Kotaku, NeoGAF, and PCGamer.
This is an interesting new look from Steam, and while it looks like it’s providing more options for people to find games the actual list of games has been pushed even futher down the page. Still, it is nice to be able to ignore notifications on Early Access and Software titles.
