I’ll be honest: I didn’t know that Steam’s personal calendar feature was still technically being tested. I’ve used it here and there to keep track of what’s been released recently or what’s coming out imminently, and I’ve generally found it to be a pretty good reflection of the types of games I’m interested in. It simply worked! Yet, lo and behold, an article from Valve was published yesterday announcing that the feature was launched from Steam Labs “and is considered a full Steam Store feature.”
The feature, if you missed it, is “another way to see games recommended for you, showing recently released and upcoming games filtered by the set of games we think you’ll be most interested in,” as Valve explains anyway. “It uses your recently played games to find people with similar gaming profiles to you, then looks at the games those players have added to their wishlist or played.” I wonder if there’s a bit more going on under the hood here, since my playtime numbers are all over the place, with nothing above 50 hours, and it’s an exception to the norm (I come from more of a console background, granted).
But even still, my recommendations remain pretty good, showing me games that I’ve since added to my wishlist. I’m never opposed to new discovery tools, especially considering how bad Valve can be at this sort of thing. Apparently, the recommendation system updates daily “to incorporate the latest data. In reality, you probably won’t see your recommendations change much from day to day, but over time you’ll obviously see new things pop up as the 8-week horizon of the calendar advances, or as games lock in their release dates.”
This is part of a larger set of changes Valve has introduced to Steam over the past couple of years, including one from last month that will change the discounts and events section of its homepage to be a little more algorithm-driven. Maybe it’s some kind of weird preparation for this new Half-Life they’re almost certainly making but only accidentally talking about.
Gn tech
