Valve redefines Steam libraries to make them look more modern

Today, Valve has announced a visual redesign of game libraries to make it easier to find your games, see what your friends are playing, and keep up with news, updates, and events from game developers. The updates come as Steam faces increasing competition from Epic Games Store and Discord to become the central hub for PC gaming. Steam has long been committed to a relatively outdated user interface, so updating is a welcome change to the service, which is almost 16 years old. The library update will be available in public beta as of September 17th.

Here is what the new library will look like:

Picture: Valve

If you click on a game, your Steam friends will see activities such as their successes and those that have played recently, as well as updates and news from the developers of this game:

Picture: Valve

And here's what these developer updates will look like, what Valve calls "Steam Events":

Picture: Valve

Valve suggests developers make major updates, beta tests, release notes, free XP events or virtually anytime to communicate with players in a game. Valve says that if a developer creates a Steam event once, it will be automatically added to the community hub and the game storage page, in addition to being shared with the user libraries. You do not need to actively monitor your library to see updates. . Tools for developers to create events are available today.

You will also be able to categorize your games into collections, formerly called categories, by selecting games by hand or through filters such as genre, number of players supported by the game, or tags from the Steam store.

Picture: Valve

Valve also announced information on some Steam Labs experiments:

• Six-second automatically generated micro-trailers will be deployed for all games on Steam on September 5th, and Polygon says that Micro Trailers will replace the images you see when you search for a game.
• An experimental search page, with new price and sales filters, infinite scrolling, etc., will also be launched on September 5th.
• Deep Dive, a new way to discover games you might like, based on a tool called Lars Doucet's Steam Diving Bell, will be available soon.