Valve Are Changing How Steam Works
Summary
TLDRValve is revamping Steam with updates to user reviews, demos, and store pages for a cleaner and more streamlined user experience. User reviews are being reworked to prioritize helpful feedback, while demos have become standalone products with their own pages and reviews. Store pages will be restricted to game-specific content, banning off-site links and advertisements for other games. Additionally, Valve is exploring bringing Steam OS to third-party devices, with ongoing work to support more handhelds, potentially revolutionizing handheld gaming with improved performance and battery life.
Takeaways
- 😀 Valve and Steam are undergoing a 'clean' with updates on demos, store pages, and user reviews.
- 🔄 Steam user reviews are being reworked to downplay less useful reviews, using a combination of human moderation and machine learning algorithms.
- 📊 Demos on Steam are now separate products with their own pages and reviews, allowing for more direct feedback and better discoverability.
- 🛍️ Store pages on Steam are being streamlined to focus solely on the game they are promoting, with policies against advertising other games or external links from September.
- 🆕 Valve is working on Steam OS support for additional handheld devices, indicating a future where more devices could natively run Steam OS.
- 🎮 The change in demo handling on Steam led to issues with the 'New and Trending' page, prompting the introduction of a 'Trending Free' section.
- 🤖 Machine learning is being utilized by Valve to help scale human judgment in the review moderation process.
- 🚫 Valve's policy changes aim to prevent store pages from becoming de facto websites for developers, focusing instead on a clear and simple user experience.
- 📝 The script mentions the potential of improved performance and battery life in future handheld gaming devices, thanks to advancements in chip technology from companies like Qualcomm and Apple.
- 🎉 The video also discusses community engagement and the importance of user reviews serving an educational and informative purpose for consumers.
- 🔒 Valve assures that they have no intention of deleting any user reviews, as long as they adhere to the platform's terms of service.
Q & A
What major updates has Valve been rolling out for Steam?
-Valve has been rolling out updates that affect user reviews, demos, and store pages on Steam. They are reworking the way user reviews are displayed, making demos separate products with their own pages and reviews, and shifting store pages to focus solely on the game they are promoting without advertising other games or external links.
How will the updated Steam user reviews system work?
-The updated system will downplay less useful reviews on the store page. Valve will use a combination of the 'was this review helpful' button, human moderation, and machine learning algorithms to determine the visibility and usefulness of reviews.
What changes are being made to Steam demos?
-Demos are now separate products on Steam with their own pages and user reviews. This allows developers to receive direct feedback on demos and improves discoverability for users.
Why did Valve decide to make demos separate products on Steam?
-Valve wants to provide developers with a way to receive real user feedback on demos, which can be valuable for development and marketing. It also helps with discoverability, as a demo can gain its own popularity and positive reviews.
What issues arose from making demos separate products on Steam?
-The change disrupted the 'New and Trending' page on Steam, as many chart spots were taken up by demos for an extended period. Valve responded by adding a 'Trending Free' feature to give paid games their visibility back.
What is Valve's stance on banning certain types of content from Steam store pages?
-Valve is enforcing a policy to ban off-Steam links, advertising of other games, and imagery that replicates store functions on Steam store pages. This is to ensure that store pages remain clear and focused on the game they are promoting.
How does Valve's policy change for store pages affect indie developers?
-Indie developers may find it more challenging to redirect traffic from Steam to their own websites or community hubs like Discord. They will need to focus on building their own presence outside of Steam.
What is Valve's current focus regarding Steam OS?
-Valve is continuing to work on adding support for additional handhelds on Steam OS. They are also considering third-party device support, but it is not yet ready for out-of-the-box use.
What does the future hold for Steam OS and third-party devices?
-While Steam OS is not yet ready for widespread third-party device support, Valve is actively working on it. The future could see more handheld devices natively supporting Steam OS, offering improved performance and battery life.
How does the script relate to the potential impact of new ARM-based chips on gaming devices?
-The script suggests that ARM-based chips, similar to those used in Apple's M1/M2 chips and Qualcomm's offerings, could significantly improve the power-to-performance ratio in handheld gaming devices, potentially leading to a renaissance in handheld gaming.
What is the script's perspective on the importance of user reviews in informing consumer decisions?
-The script emphasizes that user reviews are crucial for serving consumer needs, providing education, and informing purchasing decisions. It advocates for useful reviews, whether positive or negative, to be prioritized over less informative content.
Outlines
🛠 Steam Platform Updates
Valve is implementing several updates to the Steam platform, focusing on user reviews, demos, and store pages. User reviews are being reworked to prioritize helpful feedback over memes or less useful content, using a combination of user voting and machine learning algorithms. Demos are now treated as separate products with their own pages and reviews, which can improve discoverability and provide developers with direct user feedback. Store pages are being streamlined to focus solely on the game they represent, with policies against promoting other games or external links coming into effect from September.
🎮 Steam Demos and Store Page Changes
The script discusses the shift in how Steam handles demos, making them standalone products with their own pages and reviews, which can potentially go viral and receive positive feedback independently of the main game. However, this change initially impacted the visibility of new and trending paid games, prompting Valve to introduce a 'Trending Free' feature to ensure paid games retain their spotlight. Additionally, Valve is enforcing new policies for store pages to prevent cross-promotion and maintain a clear focus on the individual game, which may affect indie developers' strategies for redirecting traffic to their communities or other games.
🔧 Steam OS Developments and Future of Handheld Gaming
The script touches on Valve's ongoing work with Steam OS, including support for additional handheld devices. While not ready for out-of-the-box use on third-party devices, Valve is actively developing the technology. The mention of ROG Ally keys hints at potential compatibility with future devices. The script also speculates on the impact of advanced chips from Qualcomm and AMD on handheld gaming devices, suggesting a future where handhelds could offer significant performance improvements and better battery life, possibly leading to a renaissance in handheld gaming with Steam OS playing a central role.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Valve
💡Steam
💡User Reviews
💡Demos
💡Store Pages
💡Machine Learning
💡Steam OS
💡Trending
💡Indie Dev
💡Qualcomm
💡Steam Deck
Highlights
Valve is updating Steam with changes to demos, store pages, and user reviews.
Demos on Steam are becoming separate products with their own pages and reviews.
User reviews on Steam are being reworked to downplay less useful reviews on store pages.
Valve will use a combination of human moderation and machine learning to assess review helpfulness.
Steam is introducing a 'trending free' feature to separate free games and demos from paid games in visibility.
Valve is banning off-Steam links and advertisements of other games on Steam store pages for clarity.
Steam OS is being updated with support for additional handhelds, hinting at future third-party device compatibility.
Valve is working on tech for third-party devices to use Steam OS, though it's not ready for out-of-the-box use yet.
The ROG Ally X, a device not using Steam OS, is mentioned, highlighting the desire for native Steam OS support on such devices.
The potential for improved power-to-performance ratios in handheld devices with new chips from Qualcomm and Apple is discussed.
Valve's commitment to improving Steam's user experience and store page consistency is emphasized.
Indie developers may face challenges in redirecting Steam traffic to external sites due to new policy changes.
The impact of policy changes on user experience, such as the loss of easy access to community Discords, is considered.
Valve's intention to keep the Steam platform clear and simple for customers is highlighted.
The future of handheld gaming with Steam OS and advanced chips is painted as promising for performance and battery life.
The video concludes with a call to viewers for feedback on the updates and their gaming experiences.
Transcripts
welcome back to the show everyone today
we get to talk about valve and steam
because they're giving steam a bit of a
clean and this will hit all of us we're
seeing demos be a bit different store
pages are shifting and user reviews are
being reworked a bit and there's
actually more than just that valver also
cooking up something with Steam OS that
I think could be kind of huge but we'll
talk about steam first valve have
basically spent a week rolling out
updates in a peace meal fashion they've
been updating the Steamworks blog that
means we have got a lot to break down
today across reviews demos and store
pages and if you'd like even more from
our team go and check out the latest
edition of loading screen over in bell.
games in that we dive into 2025 game
delays because it turns out yes
everything's being delayed to 2025 and
the unfortunate Saga of a mod that
Activision killed just two days before
launch which really is kind of painful
so over there you get tons of exclusive
content our videos without ads and we
get to be secure and sustainable so it's
a big win for everyone and a big thank
you to our supporters with that said
user reviews okay how helpful is review
that is just asy art or a meme that's
not really related to the game well
according to Val there's been over 140
million steam user reviews to date and
uh not all of them are useful so what
they've done is they've updated the
steam user reviews so that the less
useful types of reviews will be
downplayed on the store Page now in a
way we all look at that and think okay
right I mean post memes those are
fine but they're not really going to be
helpful that being said you could also
see a situation where certain types of
reviews that are may be a bit more rude
or a bit more scathing but still could
be of value to a user where those ones
would end up being deprioritized I'm
sure you're all aware of what it's like
when you go to like a product page and
you maybe see it's got three and a half
stars but you scroll down to the reviews
and you sort of think hang on this is
three and a half Stars where are all of
the low reviews why is everything here
glowing so that's absolutely what people
could be scared of here and you could
say that Val would have an incentive to
have games put their best foot forward
to get more sales though of course in
the long run that would probably erode
user confidence and be bad so the way
that they're planning to determine this
is the was this review helpful button so
that's there it's still going to be
counted but there's going to be more
moderation past that so here's what
valve says the steam moderation team
looking closely at a lot of reviews and
some machine learning algorithms to help
scale the human judgment calls so this
is basically just valve trying to tidy
things up you can still leave a negative
post review and that still will be
counted towards the overall like Rev
score valve says as well they've got no
interest in deleting the reviews of any
player as long as those reviews are in
the terms of service here's literally
what they say their indication of
whether they would recommend a game is
still valuable data even if they're not
able to articulate why so that's
definitely a good thing I'm sure there's
some game devs who see a negative review
and a post and think oh man really
but look that negative sentiment is
probably still real and probably still
there now in theory valve have had
something something like this before
with the awards system right because you
know you can put down rewards and you
can put down the funny reward as an
example so you can see Val using those
as a data point but honestly I think
that would be a pretty bad idea at the
end of the day those awards are just a
bit of community engagement a bit of fun
I don't think there's something that uh
really people would want to be to be
used in that manner and that's why it's
good that valve are actually doing some
moderation here like some actual
moderation on top of that so in theory
this should improve things further and
help to avoid a situation where
developers are getting treated un fairly
based on memes hopefully and to be clear
this is only the start valve said that
they're actually working on more things
while they refine this and they
basically say it should end up being a
better customer experience will it be
will it not be I'm not 100% sure but
look I'd rather have useful you know
positive or negative I'd rather have
useful reviews that people have rated as
being helpful um up there at the top
rather than just posts to get lots
of Engagement because people find it to
be funny as much as I'm all there for
the fun like uh I mean it's user reviews
are actually there to serve a bit of
consumer need and to educate and inform
so that's that the next thing then is
demos and it's really interesting what's
happened here so in the past the demo
would just exist within the steam page
of its like its Host Game its parent
game but as of July demos are actually a
separate product on Steam that means
they've got their own page and it also
means they've got their own reviews now
that bit specifically is fascinating to
me because you can put out a demo and
you can get real user review feedback
for that demo not just not just stuff
that's you skimming a forum but actually
people casting a vote I think that's
actually going to be of real high
utility for developers but it's also
going to be quite good for
discoverability this means that a demo
can go out there have its own page
essentially go viral and get loads of
positive reviews so that even is a
really strong part of of marketing for a
game now of course steam is a complex
network of systems one change can impact
others and when Steam change Demos in
this way they actually broke the new and
trending page of steam because with
demos being Standalone products what
basically happened is loads of chart
spots were taken up for nearly a month
by demos now obviously a demo pushing a
full release of a paid game out of one
of the highest visibility areas of steam
is uh is not really a good thing and the
good news here is that valve have
learned the lesson and they've added a
new core feature called trending free so
now paid games get their Spotlight back
but free to play games like say
Supermarket together benchmarking tools
like the black myth uh Wukong one and
loads of demos those are basically away
from the paid area and they now exist in
their own free and trending spot which I
think is just a big win for everybody
the next change then is to steam store
pages so valve wants a store page for a
game to just be a store page for a game
they don't want it to be other things
and that means policy decisions are
being made from September they will be
banning off steam links they'll be
banning the advertising of other games
and any imagery that replicates their
store functions like as an example
having a wish list button like within a
bit of your games marketing or a
screenshot or something like like that
now this was prompted by store pages
that look like this one this was spotted
by the creator of steamdb and what you
can see is links to four other games and
a community Discord now this of course
happens for for Fairly understandable
reasons if you're an indie Dev right
where you going to get most of your
traffic the answer is not your own
website so what actually happens is a
store Page and Community hub for a game
ends up being well it ends up being your
equivalent of a website so if you're a
developer you'll perhaps want to move
people over to your Discord where you
can give a better experience perhaps if
you're a publisher well maybe you'll
want to also in a store Page promote
other games maybe there's cross
promotion there and maybe as a publisher
you think okay well if we're
cross-promoting all of our games and all
of our steam Pages then that will just
be more visibility and more sales for
everybody which is great but of course
From valve's perspective that's just not
what they think a store Page should be
for and when they're thinking about the
customer experience in their platform
they just want it to be more clear and
simple so overall there are some obvious
downsides here if you're a user and you
find it useful let's say a discount for
another game that is related to the game
that you're currently looking at if you
thought it was useful that that discount
could be linked there if you maybe
thought it was useful that you could
have easy access to the community
Discord without having to maybe search
for the developer on like you know X or
whatever platform well yeah you will
kind of lose out and if you're an indie
developer well this certainly means that
you'll have a far harder time
redirecting the massive amounts of
traffic that you can get from Steam over
to somewhere else but I think what this
fundamentally will do is it will mean
the developers will have to think about
sort of building their own castle having
strong social media presence actually
doing things outside of steam I can
certainly see that being more work I can
see that being annoying but the flip
side of that is for a user it means that
a steam page is a steam page is a steam
page they'll all operate in the same way
and you'll have a consistent experience
it could actually be that valve just
sees loads of like user confusion and
stuff like that on Steam and this is
just a way for them to uh make that go
away now steam of course is yes the
platform yes the storefront but also
Steam OS is a Linux drro and this is
where things get kind of fun so valve
are still open to Steam OS on other
platforms and this was captured by The
Verge now you may have seen a lot of
people say oh man I cannot believe that
the Verge had the goal to publish an
article on deadlock the new game coming
out from Val that honestly I think looks
absolutely sick and I can't wait to play
in fact I've uh I don't even know who
but I got a steam notification on my
phone saying that I've been invited to
the play test so um who knows may maybe
I will have to play the game and then
hit the uh hit the Escape key and not
agree to the secrecy thing that being
said I've got way too much value in my
Steam account and I do not want to lose
that but anyway a lot of people
thought the Verge had been blacklisted
but uh that's definitely not the case
because days after that happened The
Verge reached out to Val for comment and
they got a response certainly doesn't
seem like a blacklist anyway what's
happened is Steam OS update notes that
included this added support for extra
Rog Ally keys and this is of course kind
of relevant because the Rog Ally X
launched a few weeks back and it really
is a fantastic piece of Kit I've I've
got a rag Ali the um the base one and to
be honest I think it's really fantastic
even just playing hell divers on it and
the fact that it's got a high refresh
rate screen um as much as the deck OLED
is really nice for you know obviously
having an OLED playing dusk at like uh
the maximum frame rate on that thing
felt great but anyway the problem with
the Rog Ally is it doesn't use Steam OS
it just is using Windows which kind of
blows now what does help you a lot there
is Steam Big Picture Mode which is
actually fantastic and it does lead to a
really good user experience but it's not
quite as good as just how Native and I
suppose console like things are on a
deck using Steam OS now responding to
questions from the Verge valve designer
Lawrence Yang confirmed that they are
still at rating on the tech for the
purposes of third-party devices and
that's the great news here's a quote the
note about rag Alli Keys is related to
thirdparty device support for Steam OS
the team is continuing to work on adding
support for additional handhelds on
Steam OS which basically is confirming
that that's going to be a thing now does
this mean that we can expect uh you know
rapidly being able to duwel boot uh
Steam OS onto one of these things well
no not yet very explicitly not anytime
soon Yang described it as being
something that quote isn't ready to run
out of the box yet and he also did say
that jeel booting and steam deck is
being worked on as well so even though
they just shipped things like Apu audio
Wi-Fi and Bluetooth drivers for Windows
on Steam deck OLED they're very much
adamant that it's not fully done yet and
official support is just not something
uh you know that they're doing so I'm
sure there are ways for uh you know an
enterprising user to do fun things there
but it's not a fully valve backed
experience because even right now say
the audio drivers are not working on the
native speakers of the device they only
work for Bluetooth and headphones so
there are still loads of little kinks
that have got to be ironed out there but
the good news is that's exactly what
valve are doing so we're not quite there
yet but we certainly are getting there
and the one thing that I'll really say
just excites me so much in this is
Qualcomm have entered the race I believe
AMD have as well so one of the cool
things about this laptop that I'm using
or uh well not this iPhone actually but
like the newer ones they are remarkably
strong now I could go and you know have
a whole big discussion about uh you know
about Arm about risk and Y yada y
basically the point is our big fat
chunky x86 processors are uh you know
they they use quite a lot of quite a lot
of power they kick out quite a lot of
heat if you take a look at say um and
look Apple's certainly um Apple Cherry
picks you know whenever you see a graph
from Tim Apple you got to watch out but
the the truth has been like on you know
the M1 M2 you know whatever um MacBooks
they have had a ridiculous battery life
to Performance ratio as compared to an
equivalent Windows machine now what's
been really exciting in is that Qualcomm
have got let's just say a similar class
of chips and those are coming out on
Windows devices right now what's
exciting then is the sorts of power that
maybe you'll see in a modern iPad as
like you know the iPad Pro that's got
the M4 chip well you'll actually start
to see that kind of power uh be
available on the likes of your rag Ally
or your new steam deck and that should
actually unlock a whole new level of
power and performance cuz again whether
you're using the deck or the Ally I I
mean man you can hear those fans
worrying you can see the battery drain
you know you're sitting there worrying
about the wattage uh you know like the
the the the power draw of your chip and
you've got different like power profiles
for your chip a lot of that stuff won't
really matter as much whenever uh you
know whenever we're moving ahead to U
you know something like apple silicon
what Qualcomm are doing and I believe
AMD are trying to compete in that space
as well so this isn't exactly a thing
for now but it is to say that uh well
take a look at the raw gy and the raw gy
X I believe those are still using very
very similar chips what could be cool is
our next version of that could be quite
a bit more of a step change in power to
Performance ratio that combined with
more ubiquitous support for Steam OS
truly could mean that this kind of
Renaissance and handheld gaming that
we're getting that it will only get
better you'll be getting more
performance better battery life similar
prices like honestly the future is kind
of bright and that's why it's really
good to hear that Val are working in
this stuff so that's it for today's
video I hope whole bunch of updates with
valvin steam let me know what you think
and if you've been playing deadlock also
let me know what your time has been like
anyway that's it for me you can catch
more content from me and the team over
at b. games and with that said I'll see
you next time
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