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Valve aren't just rolling out more experimental features in the Steam Lab, they're also taking a stab at improving how Steam recommends games to you with some adjustments now live.

In the developer-focused blog post on Steam, the "Store Discovery Update" is out with what they say are "several algorithmic changes and bug fixes" in an effort to be more "precise" and "diverse" in what users see in the Recommendation Feed, More Like This and Recommended for You store sections. If you don't know them, it's these bits:

One of the main problems seemed to be the most popular games driving these sections, Valve claims this happened with the "Similar by Tags" section and it was a bug they've since fixed. There's lots of other little bug fixes and changes done, which has also resulted in the "Recommended for You" section also now being less biased towards the most popular titles.

It seems they ran a bit of an experiment with around 5% of users sneakily being tested. As a result of those tests, Valve decided it was working a lot better. They showed the below chart which shows how big the difference was with their tweaks and bug fixes for the "Recommended For You" section:

So a 75% increase in the total number of unique games visited, plus a 48% increase in the average visits per game. Pretty great odds that.

Valve also said they saw more purchases and wishlisting being done from places driven by Tags, like the "More Like This" section as a result of them now showing a better selection.

Hopefully now, the same games won't appear all the time that I simply don't click on. It will be interesting to see what developers say about this when it's been live for a few weeks, as our Twitter feed is constantly full of game developers talking about how Steam hits and revenue is down constantly.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Steam, Update, Valve
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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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Liam Dawe Sep 12, 2019
Quoting: devnullIf Valve is actually paying attention I'd love more technical filters.. As it stands now you can't for example filter by required hardware or game engine.
I imagine that's because Valve likely don't store such data in categories to select, given how varied the system requirements are like people being able to note "CPU: Potato" for example.
Liam Dawe Sep 12, 2019
Quoting: devnullCode may not be there but their datamodel has to have it else they wouldn't be able to display it at all (hardware requirements). The Engine should be doable too for data served via steam.
Not if its just plain text, I've seen all kinds of dumb things in system requirements so it's likely just storing whatever developers write.


Last edited by Liam Dawe on 12 September 2019 at 10:34 pm UTC
geekening Sep 13, 2019
yo what a useless bar graph. what they said was enough

QuoteThe results were very promising: we saw a 75% increase in the number of unique games visited, and a 48% increase in the average visits per game

the bar doesnt show anything and without any labels other than +75% we dont know what to make of it
Nezchan Sep 13, 2019
Maybe this will result in me not having my Featured & Recommended section being 80% VNs when I've bought something like one in my entire life.
14 Sep 13, 2019
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"Precise" and "diverse" at the same time is hard to understand. But I'm imagining good things! Honestly, it's very rare that I look at the Steam store the past year or so since GoL tells me what I need to know.
Beamboom Sep 13, 2019
Quoting: HoriHowever, the engine filter is a neat idea.

I don't understand why? Would you buy (or not buy) a game based on what engine it's built on? If so, why? There's poor performance and badly designed games being made on all engines... And vice versa?
Eike Sep 13, 2019
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Quoting: geekeningthe bar doesnt show anything and without any labels other than +75% we dont know what to make of it

Well, I do. What's missing in your opinion and what would you make of it?
Liam Dawe Sep 13, 2019
Quoting: Eike
Quoting: geekeningthe bar doesnt show anything and without any labels other than +75% we dont know what to make of it

Well, I do. What's missing in your opinion and what would you make of it?
I'm not sure either how it was confusing. It was a pretty self explanatory chart given what it's all talking about. Either way I added a bit below it so it's 110% clear.
Nanobang Sep 13, 2019
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Numbers, numbers---math, math, math. XD
LungDrago Sep 13, 2019
Quoting: Beamboom
Quoting: HoriHowever, the engine filter is a neat idea.

I don't understand why? Would you buy (or not buy) a game based on what engine it's built on? If so, why? There's poor performance and badly designed games being made on all engines... And vice versa?

Some engines run like crap on Linux/Proton and there's little the game developers can do about it. So, as a Linux consumer, I might want to filter those out.
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