Home Gaming Steam gets a new update – it’s blue and ready to take your money

Steam gets a new update – it’s blue and ready to take your money

3 min read
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blue steam

There are 3 things a PC gamer can’t do without – a good keyboard, a speedy mouse, and the Steam client. The latter is possibly the most important. It’s the home of of our large backlogs which we will never finish, the place where we socialise with our gaming buddies more so than in real life, and also the eventual landing place of Half-Life 3 (don’t shatter my dreams Gaben!). If you’ve updated your Steam recently, you’ll have noticed it’s gone a shade bluer. There are some new features hiding underneath that new coat of paint.

From what I can tell, the new update seems to be all about making the search for new games that little bit easier (Destructoid via Steam)

In the past nine months, over 1,300 new titles have been added to Steam. We know you can’t play them all, so we’ve updated Steam with new features and functionality to help you discover the best new releases, the classics, and the unique indie gems you might be interested in.

1 300 titles? That’s a lot of games that don’t really need to be added to my backlog! There are a lot of improvements which can be read right here. For your convenience though, I’ve chosen the two new additions that interest me the most, and we all know life is about how correct my opinion is. The first is called the ‘Discovery Queue’.

Your Steam Discovery Queue is a powerful, new way of exploring the most popular new releases that you haven’t yet seen. You can quickly browse through games that are suggested for you, and you can choose to follow the game, add it to your Wishlist, purchase it, or indicate that you are not interested. Your Discovery Queue is automatically refreshed each day with new, top-selling releases.

It’s essentially the hot-or-not app of the gaming world. You take a quick glance at a game, then decide whether it is worth your time or not. My Steam for example, had 11 games in the queue for me to check out.

queue

One quick glance at the tags and the screenshot gives me an indication as to what the game is about. It also appears to be quite decent based on all the user reviews it has received. What I’m not quite sold on is that this game (along with the other 10) only appeared in my queue because they are popular. I’m hoping future recommendations that appear will be based on the games I have played rather.

The next addition to the client is the ‘Steam Curators’ feature. It’s another avenue of discovering new games – based on other peoples opinions (which are clearly wrong and invalid when compared to my own).

Steam Curators are individuals, organizations, and groups that publish reviews and recommendations in a public forum on Steam.

Following a few Steam Curators is another way to discover and learn about new products. Their picks show up on your home page as well as in your community activity feed, where you can comment and rate those recommendations.

You don’t need that feature… Lazygamer is the best curator already, right? Don’t believe me? These are the curators that popped up in my Steam…

Curator

I do enjoy playing vidya james in my spare time! As of writing, there are already 1400+ curators to choose from. Good luck, and my the odds be ever in your favour! One curator you can (and should) follow is MakegamesSA. You can find all our local gaming goodness right there.

Overall though, it is a nice update by Steam. It’s what I really needed – more ways to spend my money. Thanks Gaben, you da best!

(Header Source)

Last Updated: September 23, 2014

39 Comments

  1. Yeah this update is pretty awesome. It tries to filter all those BS games out for you.Well at least it tries.

    Reply

    • Mossel

      September 23, 2014 at 13:53

      Yeah I denied 8/9 games that they tried to impress me with. Following The Long Dark. That looks intriguing.

      Reply

      • Jedi Consular Kromas

        September 23, 2014 at 13:55

        Yeah I denied about 4 games myself and also followed the long dark (due to ea I don’t want it on my wishlist just yet)

        Reply

  2. Mossel

    September 23, 2014 at 13:51

    LOL! Comfy vidya james!

    Reply

  3. Hammersteyn

    September 23, 2014 at 13:55

    Turned blue you say?

    B =3
    L =12
    U =21
    E =5
    5-((3+21)/12) = 3

    HL3 confirmed!

    Reply

    • Mossel

      September 23, 2014 at 13:56

      hahaha!! The math is SOUND! Trust me I’m an engineer.

      Reply

    • Maxiviper117

      September 23, 2014 at 13:58

      There just had to be a hl3 reference in there somewhere:)

      Reply

    • hairyknees

      September 23, 2014 at 13:59

      Your maths was NEARLY sound. B = 2 🙁

      Still…

      B = 2
      L = 12
      U = 21
      E = 5

      21 + 12 = 33
      5 – 2 = 3

      Three 3’s…

      HL3 CONFIRMED!

      Reply

      • Hammersteyn

        September 23, 2014 at 13:59

        CRAP!!!

        Reply

      • Hammersteyn

        September 23, 2014 at 14:00

        Thanks…
        * Someone kill me

        Reply

        • Admiral Chief 0

          September 23, 2014 at 14:07

          To the corner, you must go

          Reply

          • Alien Emperor Trevor

            September 23, 2014 at 14:08

            NO STEAM SALES FOR A MONTH!

          • Admiral Chief 0

            September 23, 2014 at 14:22

            Disable his destiny account for a week!

          • Alien Emperor Trevor

            September 23, 2014 at 14:27

            RELEASE THE CENTIPEDES!

          • Hammersteyn

            September 23, 2014 at 15:20

            I wanna go to the basement in the Blair Witch project and sit in that corner.

        • Mossel

          September 23, 2014 at 14:23

          hahaha!! Ah man that makes me the worst engineer ever! Also didn’t pick it up! Defuq did I pass mathematics all these years?!

          Reply

          • Brady miaau

            September 23, 2014 at 14:24

            Because engineers cannot do simple maths. Fact.

          • Mossel

            September 23, 2014 at 14:26

            This is very true. The amount of times I said 3+3=9 is quite embarrassing!

          • Hammersteyn

            September 23, 2014 at 15:20

            This about sums up my highschool maths. I always mess it up at the start.

    • RinceThis

      September 23, 2014 at 14:00

      B=3? What language you speaking boy?

      Reply

      • Hammersteyn

        September 23, 2014 at 14:00

        Greek

        Reply

      • hairyknees

        September 23, 2014 at 14:01

        It’s ok, I fixed the formula. Trust me, I’m a gaming journalist!

        Reply

        • RinceThis

          September 23, 2014 at 14:12

        • ReaperOfSquirrels

          September 23, 2014 at 14:17

          I hear you’re a gaming journalist that’s covering Sexpo… HTF does that work?

          Reply

          • Alien Emperor Trevor

            September 23, 2014 at 14:17

            He’s got GAME yo!

          • ReaperOfSquirrels

            September 23, 2014 at 14:21

            And I guess there’ll be peripherals there that get incorporated into games…

          • hairyknees

            September 23, 2014 at 14:28

            I DON’T KNOW I JUST WORK HERE! xD

        • Alien Emperor Trevor

          September 23, 2014 at 14:18

          You’re jornalizms is weak & cabbage-based!

          Reply

          • RinceThis

            September 23, 2014 at 14:34

            Ouch! Shame man!

  4. ReaperOfSquirrels

    September 23, 2014 at 13:58

    Seems to be chucking pretty much the same stuff up for everyone.

    Reply

  5. Alien Emperor Trevor

    September 23, 2014 at 14:02

    It’s needed this badly. If you’re not religiously following the latest releases & stuff it’s not that easy to spot the good ones in the gamestack.

    Reply

    • Mike

      September 23, 2014 at 14:09

      My filtering system is a lot easier. I read lazygamer and especially the comments. That’s where I find out about new games to look out for.
      Now comment and don’t let me down!

      Reply

      • Admiral Chief 0

        September 23, 2014 at 14:22

        FTL
        TWA
        Planetside 2

        Reply

        • Mike

          September 23, 2014 at 14:24

          FTL – Played
          TWA Thomas Was Alone? – Played
          Planetside 2 – Not yet

          Reply

          • Admiral Chief 0

            September 23, 2014 at 14:49

            My PS2 addiction kicking in again recently, the learning curve is quite steep, but really fun game. I use it as my go to pew pew MP

        • ReaperOfSquirrels

          September 23, 2014 at 14:26

          Warframe
          Deponia series
          Terraria
          F1 2013
          Don Bradman Cricket 14
          Diablo 3… Wait… hmmmm…

          Reply

  6. CAE9872

    September 23, 2014 at 14:42

    I thought the 3 things important to the Master Race is :

    (1) Lord Gabe N
    (2) Steam
    (3) Half Life 3
    (not necessarily in that order)

    See? There is 3 things AGAIN! It MUST mean HL3 is now official…

    Reply

  7. Sir Rants A Lot Llew

    September 23, 2014 at 15:08

    “What I’m not quite sold on is that this game (along with the other 10) only appeared in my queue because they are popular. I’m hoping future recommendations that appear will be based on the games I have played rather.”

    I’m pretty sure it is going to take some time for the filters to gather enough info to suggest the right things.

    The same effect with Google Now on Android. The first month or so it suggests very random things but eventually starts to get to know you better

    Reply

  8. HisDivineOrder

    September 23, 2014 at 17:18

    The new update is making the UI too busy. They need to either stretch this thing out to the sides instead of just vertically (because it’s a glorified web page) or they need to give us an option to disable the new additions we don’t like because when I first load the page and I have to scroll all the way down to get to the Most Popular Sales and the current Sales, I don’t think the UI is working properly.

    It’s way too cluttered. It makes me want to clean out my closet. Sheesh, Valve. Keep It Simple, Stupid.

    Reply

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