On their official website, Valve announced that they would be releasing their Steam curator update soon. Steam curators are “individuals or organizations that make recommendations to help others discover interesting games in the Steam catalog.”
Valve claims they have taken feedback into account from players, curators, streamers etc., about the curating system and has announced multiple changes. Changes for players include:
- There will be improvements for front page recommendations. Curator recommendations will “show up at the top of tag and genre pages.”
- Curator-reviewed games that have similar content, genres, themes etc. will be placed together, so players can view other games they may like along with the current game they’re viewing.
- New lists “recommended curators” and “top curators” are added to help players find games that are more accurate to their interests.
Changes for Curators include:
- Curator produced videos can easily be embedded along curated content in multiple video formats such as YouTube, nicovideo.jp, youku.com etc.
- Curators can personalize their pages by adding customized backgrounds and specific games, lists and tags.
- Curators can view graphs to see how their reviews affect their content when players view it.
Changes for Game Developers include:
- Developers can use curator connect to search for curators and “send copies of their game directly through steam.” Results can be narrowed by “name, OS, language, or tags that the Curator indicates they focus on.” Tools have been added on Steam’s website to help with this process, and make it easier for developers to compile a list of curators they want to work with.
Curators can choose not to use the new features, and the update is in the beta testing stages at the moment. Curators who are selected to use the features in the update will provide Steam with feedback on the tool’s functionality, and are “free to share their thoughts publicly, so you may see some screenshots or write-ups from these Curators as they explore the new features and discuss them with the community.”