Valve have detailed some changes coming to Steam in an overview post

Personally I'm most excited about the reworked steam client. I hope it means plenty more filters and sorting options.

With the 0.82% Linux Share on Steam:

~738 000 Monthly Active Linux users
~385 400 Daily Active Linux users
~151 700 Peak Concurrent Linux users
~13 120 New Linux Purchasers per Month

We’re working on a new recommendation engine powered by machine-learning, that can match players to games based on their individual tastes.

This doesn't sound very encouraging, to be honest; they seem to be chasing the same magically self-regulating minimal-effort dream of a curation model.

Algorithms are only a part of our discoverability solution, however, so we're building more broadcasting and curating features and are constantly assessing the overall design of the store.

Yeah, but they shouldn't just 'build features'; they should employ real people to put real thought into what gets sold or highlighted on the store.

These changes might actually do some good, but I really think they should focus on the curator system (if they insist on not doing any curation themselves). All the algorithm seems to be doing is giving me even less views despite recent positive reactions from the few players who have found the game. Ultimately I knew all along I would get little to no help going in and I'll have to do things by hand if I must, but it would be nice having the tools to reach my very specific kind of audience.

Overhaul to library would be great. So easy to forget about games and impossible to keep them organized. It's like the 5th time now that my categories have been wiped, so just given up on that.

re: reorganizing steam library: I've only recently discovered that steam has a pretty robust game filter based on tags, they should use tags similarly for your library.

An interesting part of the article:

We also took what we learned about mitigating denial-of-service attacks on our own games and made it available to some non-Valve multiplayer titles in a private beta. And since you ship your games on multiple platforms, we made the GameNetworkingSockets[github.com] library open source and Steam agnostic. The Steam version of your game can take advantage of our private network and get the same DoS protection that Dota 2 or CS:GO have. This means that we'll relay all your game network traffic, which keeps the IP addresses of your game servers and clients anonymized, and safe from the script kiddies. In the coming year we're planning to let you use our private network for the non-Steam version of your game as well.

While many stores, publishers and hardware vendors are trying to push exclusives, Valve is open sourcing some of their tools so that developers don't have to make their games Steam-exclusive.

Valve has its many flaws (their hands-off approach to curation or their subpar treatment of indies for example). But they are still so far ahead of the competition it's just hard not to support Steam.

Valve has its many flaws (their hands-off approach to curation or their subpar treatment of indies for example). But they are still so far ahead of the competition it's just hard not to support Steam.

Yep! And when you read the complete post... It's quite shocking (unfair? Surprising?) when people say that Valve takes a 30% cut without doing anything... I don't see Epic offering an equivalent infrastructure now and not before a long, long time...

Edit: I hoped we would get news about new hardware, but Valve being Valve, we still may have surprises. :)


Last edited by Mohandevir on 14 Jan 2019 at 9:24 pm UTC

We’re working on a new recommendation engine powered by machine-learning, that can match players to games based on their individual tastes.

This doesn't sound very encouraging, to be honest; they seem to be chasing the same magically self-regulating minimal-effort dream of a curation model.

Yep. The trouble with this sort of thing, even sprinkled with magical machine-learning pixie dust, is that it only knows what you already own or have on your wishlist. With the limited selection of native Linux games (and my own limited finances), I know that my Steam library doesn't really match my tastes in gaming very well. It's getting closer all the time, to be sure, but there are still major titles that I'd like to play but, for various reasons, can't. At least not yet. Valve's big machine brain doesn't know that, and never can.

And that's not even mentioning the fact that sometimes you want something completely un-like anything you've played before. Human minds aren't machines.

Stop 0kb Downloads now!....,plx!
Download library Banners permanently instead of every time you scroll through the library, plx!
Make the highlight/middle-click paste work in Steam client, plx!
THEN start thinking about new stuff or redesigning old s(h)...tuff!
Thx!

Yep. The trouble with this sort of thing, even sprinkled with magical machine-learning pixie dust, is that it only knows what you already own or have on your wishlist. With the limited selection of native Linux games (and my own limited finances), I know that my Steam library doesn't really match my tastes in gaming very well. It's getting closer all the time, to be sure, but there are still major titles that I'd like to play but, for various reasons, can't. At least not yet. Valve's big machine brain doesn't know that, and never can.

And that's not even mentioning the fact that sometimes you want something completely un-like anything you've played before. Human minds aren't machines.

Don't underestimate machine learning. That the algorithm can make deductions from factors OTHER than just what's in your own library or wishlist is the very point of it. E.g. it can it will take Windows users into consideration that might have libraries just like yours, only sans these games not available for Linux. It's not too hard to guess why you didn't buy these games, then.

The filter-bubble issue is real, but honestly, if you have 250+ games in your library, it's not all THAT likely that there are still lots of genres left you'd like but never tried yet. At least I like to think if I remotely liked car racing games, I'd have bought one by now. The sheer mass of the libraries Steam users tend to accumulate because of all these sales gives them a lot of data to work with, so I expect their AI to make pretty good suggestions.

Valve has its many flaws (their hands-off approach to curation or their subpar treatment of indies for example). But they are still so far ahead of the competition it's just hard not to support Steam.

Yep! And when you read the complete post... It's quite shocking (unfair? Surprising?) when people say that Valve takes a 30% cut without doing anything... I don't see Epic offering an equivalent infrastructure now and not before a long, long time...

Edit: I hoped we would get news about new hardware, but Valve being Valve, we still may have surprises. :)

The sad part is that they take the "we want to add all those features" part as an excuse to not support linux.

I hope the steam library rework will include functionalities similar to https://www.lorenzostanco.com/lab/steam which supports things like filtering games by tags or features and combining or excluding filters. It's a real trouble to find e.g. all local co-op/multiplayer games when you have a big library.


Last edited by Lakorta on 14 Jan 2019 at 9:46 pm UTC

I'm sure a lot of people are eagerly awaiting the refreshed Steam Client, I know I am.

Is there a post about that?

I am particularly excited about the Steam library overhaul. I wonder if they will be updating the look of the client as a whole, or if this is the same situation as with the chat window.
Hopefully they'll improve the startup time as well in the near future, as it is currently my biggest problem with Steam.

I'm just waiting for more Proton updates

Steam PC Cafe Program: We are going to officially ship a new PC Cafe Program so that players can have a good experience using Steam in hundreds of thousands of PC Cafes Worldwide.

I believed it when I see it. All games at cyber cafe (CC) with Steam program here filled with damn DoTA and Counter Strikeses. Not forget, League of Legends.

At least illegal CC sometimes got PS2-era PC games library even do nowadays most of them mainly for online gambling.

I don't get a few things: Maybe you guys could enlighten me?

1. Epic Store
Why do you get so crazy about it? It's basically a launcher that allows you to buy games. Nothing more, nothing less. Many publishers do have stores. Many of them have exclusives.

2. Valve exclusives
All of their titles are exclusives, aren't they? Why do you never complain about that?

My thoughts..
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have freedom of choice where to buy and a FOSS API and launcher for every single store. Unfortunately it won't get any better then Lutris. I do appreciate their work, unfortunately the GOG feature did not even work for me.

Finally Valve do a lot of FOSS tools, DXVK, Mesa developement and much more. Still they have exclusives and a store honoring DRM.


Last edited by cRaZy-bisCuiT on 15 Jan 2019 at 12:18 am UTC

I don't get a few things: Maybe you guys could enlighten me?

1. Epic Store
Why do you get so crazy about it? It's basically a launcher that allows you to buy games. Nothing more, nothing less. Many publishers do have stores. Many of them have exclusives.

2. Valve exclusives
All of their titles are exclusives, aren't they? Why do you never complain about that?

My thoughts..
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have freedom of choice where to buy and a FOSS API and launcher for every single store. Unfortunately it won't get any better then Lutris. I do appreciate their work, unfortunately the GOG feature did not even work for me.

Finally Valve do a lot of FOSS tools, DXVK, Mesa developement and much more. Still they have exclusives and a store honoring DRM.

1) Because Epic right now has [a ton of money](https://www.pcgamer.com/epic-boss-tim-sweeney-is-worth-nearly-dollar3-billion-more-than-gabe-newell-according-to-bloomberg/), somehow their latest game is the biggest thing in gaming, and there is a lot of publicity (and even press coverage) of this store. For some time Liam also thought they would support Linux, which made it relevant to this website.

2) I don't know, those games are already old enough that it isn't news anymore? They are exclusive to the store, but not to an arbitrary platform (neither Windows, nor a console)? They are very integrated to Steam features like the marketplace, so it seems justifiable? Because its only their own games, they don't go out of their way to make deals with other publishers? I agree that any games being exclusives is bad, but I don't see people complaining that much about Blizzard games or League of Legends or other games that you can only get from the developer.

Integrated recording software when?