Valve’s Tom Giardino outlined a handful of new and upgraded features coming to Steam in the future during GDC 2019 this afternoon.
The announcement of these new, upgraded features to make Steam more attractive to developers may be linked to competition from the Epic Games Store.
Giardino began by expressing how Valve wanted to be transparent about Steam’s upcoming changes, saying that they wanted players to “experience the best possible version of a game surrounded by a rich set of features and services.”
Valve’s Alden Kroll took to the stage and introduced the new features, the first being Steam Events. It shows the players from a glance what’s happening to the games in their Steam library, including event details, which events players can currently play, and a clear call to action. Players can also set reminders for upcoming events through the Steam client or mobile app, personal calendar apps, or text messages. Events are shown throughout Steam, and players will see a personalized rollout page that will show game updates, live broadcasts, community events, tournaments, future events, etc.
A closed beta is currently underway with a handful of select developers, with Kroll saying that Steam Events will be made available to all devs later this year.
In smaller news, Steam’s library page is being redesigned, with the finalized version being pushed out around the summer. Kroll explained that the product page in the library will be changed, pulling in the aforementioned events/activities.
Players with a large category of games will be able to filter titles in their library, and can go on to save the selection as a collection.
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