I said before we would see Valve start talking a lot more this year, especially with the Epic Store being a thing and we're starting to see that now. Valve have put out a post giving some background on Steam and what's to come in future.
For those that missed it, a most recent change this January is an overhaul to the DLC list. Take a look at the DLC list for Stellaris for example, which brings it much more in line with the publisher and franchises store pages Valve rolled out last year. Instead of a rudimentary list, it's now a bit flashier.
Even Steam Play got a mention in the post, it really does cover a lot. In particular for us, it's nice to Steam Play get mentioned in such a way alongside their help with Vulkan and the Shader Pre-caching feature of Steam.
As for what's to come across 2019, some of it does sound pretty great:
Store Discoverability: We’re working on a new recommendation engine powered by machine-learning, that can match players to games based on their individual tastes. 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.
Steam China: We've partnered with Perfect World to bring Steam onshore into China. We'll reveal more details about this in the coming months.
Steam Library Update: Some long awaited changes to the Steam Client will ship, including a reworked Steam Library, built on top of the technology we shipped in Steam Chat.
New Events System: We're upgrading the events system in the Steam Community, enabling you to highlight interesting activities in your games like tournaments, streams, or weekly challenges.
Steam TV: We're working on expanding Steam TV beyond just broadcasting specific tournaments and special events, in order to support all games.
Steam Chat: We're going to ship a new Steam Chat mobile app, so you can share your favorite GIFs with your friends while on the go.
Steam Trust: The technology behind Trusted Matchmaking on CS:GO is getting an upgrade and will become a full Steam feature that will be available to all games. This means you'll have more information that you can use to help determine how likely a player is a cheater or not.
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.
The Steam Trust upgrade along with the ability for other games to use it could be interesting, especially since that should work with Steam Play titles, something I had a gripe with only recently when EAC stopped me playing Darwin Project.
Discoverability has certainly become an issue as Steam has grow that's for sure. I follow a lot of developers, the vast majority of which have recently talked about how a recent change made their store traffic decrease dramatically. This will only get worse as more games arrive on Steam (and any other store), so hopefully Valve's changes here will do good.
I'm sure a lot of people are eagerly awaiting the refreshed Steam Client, I know I am. The Library feature in Steam is so basic when you've built up a big library of games it tends to be a little unhelpful in how basic it actually is.
See their full post here.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Kimyrielle Jan 14, 2019
Quoting: DuncYep. 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.
Quoting: MohandevirQuoting: eldakingValve 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.
Last edited by Lakorta on 14 January 2019 at 9:46 pm UTC
OLucasZanella Jan 14, 2019
QuoteI'm sure a lot of people are eagerly awaiting the refreshed Steam Client, I know I am.Is there a post about that?
Userwithaname Jan 14, 2019
Hopefully they'll improve the startup time as well in the near future, as it is currently my biggest problem with Steam.
QuoteSteam 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.
cRaZy-bisCuiT Jan 15, 2019
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 January 2019 at 12:18 am UTC
Quoting: cRaZy-bisCuiTI 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, 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.
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