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Valve limits Steam store pages to 2 trailers before screenshots

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I don't know about you, but I used to get a little annoyed by endless amounts of trailers on Steam pages that didn't really show much. Valve have been paying attention again to what players want to see.

Some developers went completely overboard, listing multiple years of update trailers before you even get a single screenshot, making it annoying to just quickly at a glance see if the basic style is your cup. Lots of "trailers" show little normal gameplay too and it was a growing problem.

Valve has now announced a change, so that only two trailers will be shown before screenshots now. All other trailers will be shown after the screenshots. This is a nice win for Steam customers, making it far less frustrating overall. It may seem like a small thing, but it really does make people bounce away from store pages if they're littered with trailers that don't show what people want.

Think about it - you go to a new store page for a random game and you want to see right away what it's like. Lots of trailers plastering various logo screens and intros before you really see anything — such a nuisance.

Another change Valve made is that trailers can now have a category and name tag, so developers and publishers can tell people what type of trailer it is so you can scroll to another if you really don't care about their cinematics for just one example. A small addition but could be useful if used correctly.


Screenshot examples from Portal 2

As Valve said on why it matters:

The display of trailers on Steam store pages have been updated today to address some frustrations we've heard from players when trying to find gameplay videos or navigate to screenshots. These changes include new logic that determines the order of trailers and screenshots, plus the ability to specify a category for each trailer to show to players.
[…]
We have found that it wasn't clear to developers how best to manage trailers in order to provide the best experience for players. Many games have collected a great number of trailers over their lifetime of development and have made it harder for prospective customers to find the screenshots. At the same time, we know that players are interested in understanding a little more about the trailers they are watching. This update is intended to address both of these issues and help players more quickly learn about games they are interested in.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Misc, Steam, Valve
29 Likes
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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16 comments
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Grogan May 4, 2023
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I don't like watching videos, they take up too much of my time. The videos aren't always representative of gameplay either. I'd rather skim a paragraph of text for information, or in this case look at a few screenshots and not disingenuously downsampled ones either.
fenglengshun May 4, 2023
I honestly just disable the autoplay and never look at the trailer. Years of various online stores' videos have taught me that most of the time they waste a lot of time and aren't very informative.

They really should just apply TikTok/Shorts video principles to store trailer -- make them short, to the point, and interesting immediately and throughout.
Eike May 4, 2023
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Quoting: fenglengshunI honestly just disable the autoplay and never look at the trailer. Years of various online stores' videos have taught me that most of the time they waste a lot of time and aren't very informative.

They really should just apply TikTok/Shorts video principles to store trailer -- make them short, to the point, and interesting immediately and throughout.

I got the feeling though the autoplay option would switch itself every other week...
Eri May 4, 2023
I love this change. Now all those update and DLC trailers should be at the end if the publisher does it right. For me, the best would be a launch/cinematic and a gameplay trailer at the beggining, then screenshots and then all the updates and prerelease trailers.
fenglengshun May 4, 2023
Quoting: EikeI got the feeling though the autoplay option would switch itself every other week...
Yeah, I'm pretty sure as well. I do disable autoplay by default on my browser, but the problem is that, without disabling autoplay, Steam defaults to showing the trailer even if it doesn't play.

Usually I just can't be arsed to change it again, I only ever change it when I'm doing initial logins after distro-hopping.
14 May 7, 2023
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The annoyance has been minor for me because I disabled "Autoplay videos" years ago, which automatically skips to the first screenshot when you land on a store page.
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