The Valve and Steam Platform Discussion Thread

[LESS T_T]

More Steam Labs. Deep Dive; community review-based recommendation stream; and the Recommender is now integrated into the main page: https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1599264607923965569

Steam Labs Update
Explore new ways to discover games you’ll love in Steam Labs


Experiment 005: Deep Dive

We’ve worked with indie game developer Lars Doucet of Level Up Labs to bring his novel Diving Bell prototype to Steam Labs in the form of the Deep Dive experiment, where it now directly leverages Steam APIs to serve up recommendations and related game information. The new experiment offers an exploratory interface to discover new games based on their similarity to familiar ones, plus the ability to use these recommendations themselves as jumping-off points to dive even deeper into what Steam has to offer.



Deep Dive leverages tags provided by each game’s creators and the Steam Community of users to identify games similar to the ones you know and love. In the interest of helping users explore a breadth of games, Deep Dive displays very similar, somewhat similar, and little-known but well-loved similar games among each set of recommendations it displays. Explore Steam’s popular new releases as a jumping off point, or log in to begin exploration from one of your own recently played games. How many degrees of separation do you find between No Thing and Everything? We count six, which checks out with Bacon’s Law.

Deep Dive’s variation from the original prototype is based on some things we learned by playtesting during development. For example, tags the base game shares in common with each recommendation are more prominently displayed to help inform both what the game is about and why it was recommended.

We’ve tried to strike the right balance between providing relevant details without overwhelming users in the process of browsing and we hope you’ll let us know what you think. We can’t help but add a few items to our own wishlists each time we test Deep Dive. (Well hello, Circa Infinity!) We suspect this is a good sign of its potential, and we’d love your thoughts on whether Deep Dive offers a compelling alternative to other forms of content discovery.

Experiment 006: Community Reviews

Your Steam Friends list and activity feeds are great ways to see what games your buddies are currently enjoying, but what about the rest of the Steam Community? Top sellers are one way to keep your finger on the pulse, but positive reviews can be an even stronger signal of what the Community is enjoying on Steam. With this in mind, our Community Reviews experiment surfaces the games people are actively recommending to one another on Steam.



The Community Reviews experiment provides a great overview of what’s hot on Steam, listing today’s recommendations sorted by their helpfulness to readers. Advanced controls enable users to expand the view to include this week’s, or this month’s reviews, or to limit the set to reviews written after a particular duration of playtime. For a more specific take on the Talk, users can filter the view to include or exclude particular tags. For example, check out the punishing Perma Death games people claim to be enjoying today, or catch up on the Story-rich RPGs people are getting lost in this week, or browse through the Online Co-op games players are enjoying together this month.

Update - Experiment 002: The Interactive Recommender

The Interactive Recommender doesn’t need you to interact with it before proving itself useful, so we’ve given it a chance to earn its keep right on the Steam Store home page. Simply log into the Steam store and you’ll see games our machine learning server has lovingly featured just for you based on your recent gameplay. Plus, click through to Steam Labs where you can explore titles new or old, popular or niche, with the machine’s bespoke take on your tastes, informed by thousands of other players... a lot like you.



As always, we hope you’ll check out these latest and upcoming additions to Steam Labs and let us know what you think in the discussions. Your feedback shapes our experimentation and informs the ideas which become a part Steam for keeps.

 

[Curratum]

If Valve doesn't come up with some way to allow you to hide the "recent news" and "recently played" bands from the library home view, I'm switching to the GOG Galaxy 2.0 client.

 

[Country_Gravy]

Does it work on a tablet?

 

[LESS T_T]

Made some cover art for fun:

 

[Sentinel]

https://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta/announcements/detail/1589131508782140065

Steam Client Beta - September 23, 2019
23 SEP @ 9:33PM - MR. HOTEN
The Steam Client Beta has been updated with the following changes:

Library:

• Add screenshots section to pages for non-Steam games
  
• Make non-Steam games available when Family View is enabled
  
• Fix play bar drawing over the links bar on game details when library sharing is active

Linux:

• Fix titles depending on SDL_image not working on distros that use SDL2 2.0.10

Remote Play:

• Fix a bug causing some games, including shortcuts, to be unavailable for streaming.

SteamVR:

• Changed the desktop overlay to switch from the physical mouse back to laser mouse (from the HMD or control) on a click instead of a timeout.

 

[LESS T_T]

Made few more cover art. (Well, it's hard to ignore missing cover art bleeding all over. :shrug

Also replacing default ones of Prey and Chrono Trigger.

 

[Konjad]

Great. The competition from Epic Games Store made Valve finally update Steam and make it look just as shit.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Deep Dive is a bit buggy for me, the 'refresh' doesn't work properly. You have to go to the title before the one you selected, then select that title again for refresh to work. This only happens after you've selected a title past that title.
Probably won't make much sense until you've used the tool.

Found a few new games to buy though.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Good curator: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32754914-No-To-Easy-Anti-Cheat/
easy anti-cheat is essentially a rootkit

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Curators have been broken for me for quite some time now. I can add new Curators, but I can't search or browse for them, and if I try to put a Curator on Ignore I get a "you can't ignore a curator you already follow"-error.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

https://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta/announcements/detail/1591383946838639778

Steam Client Beta - September 26, 2019
26 Sep @ 8:31pm - Dennis G
The Steam Client Beta has been updated with the following changes:


Library:

• Replaced Home and Collections navigation buttons with Library menu options.
  
• Hid empty collections from game list.
  
• Added a "filter by platform" button to Linux and MacOS that will filter the current game list to only games that run on the current platform.
  
• One-time reset of Steam Skin selection when receiving this beta update or when first receiving the new library update. This avoids un-updated skins causing failures when opening the new library.
  
• Deleting screenshots taken in VR now also deletes the stereo version from the local disk and the cloud. Note that cloud deletion only applies to screenshots uploaded in the future, not existing shared screenshots.

Linux:

• Fix GPU crashes and overlay corruption with games that use Vulkan async compute, such as DOOM 2016.

Remote Play:

• Decreased stream latency and reduced frames dropped due to host CPU load
  
• Fixed launching VR games from the Steam Link
  
• Fixed rare Steam client crash when running the network test
  
• Added support for Wake on LAN over wireless connections with properly configured wireless adapters
  
• Fixed steam client crash under certain combinations of remote play with non-Steam apps, or on the second launch of SteamVR.

Steam Input:

• Fixed several bugs around action set layer switching
  
• Reduced Steam Input’s overall CPU usage when active

 

[LESS T_T]

Valve finally fixed the bugs introduced with the engine update: https://store.steampowered.com/news/54632/

HALF-LIFE 2, HALF-LIFE 2: EPISODE ONE, HALF-LIFE 2: EPISODE TWO, HALF-LIFE 2: LOST COAST, AND HALF-LIFE: SOURCE UPDATES RELEASED

Updates to Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, and Half-Life: Source have been released. The changes include:

• Fixed a hitch when saving games
  
• Fixed SteamVR running when entering the settings menu
  
• Fixed missing sounds on combine soldiers
  
• Fixed NPCs not blinking

 

[Hirato]

Added a "filter by platform" button to Linux and MacOS that will filter the current game list to only games that run on the current platform.

And... it's utterly useless for Linux people with Steam Play enabled.

 

[Sentinel]

Is Valve the only company that updates games 20 years after release? I wonder if they fixed the bug where a Combine vehicle's tire is clipping through the ground.

 

[LESS T_T]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1599264607941629464

Optimizing For Remote Play
Creating Compelling Touch Controls


Since bringing Steam Remote Play out of Beta it's been exciting to see the huge variety of games that it’s being used with. For a start, games with great controller support are being widely played on TVs. On mobile we've seen that some genres are more likely to be played on phones and tablets such as RPG, strategy, adventure, visual novel, and card games. Some games work great with a simple direct or trackpad cursor. But for other games, when default touch controls aren't provided, many players launch the game and then end up playing something else.

So to improve the experience we put together default touch configurations for over 100 of the most common and desired Remote Play games. We learned a lot about how to build fun touch controllers throughout this processes and would like to share a few interesting case studies.

Ni No Kuni Wrath of the White Witch

Launched last week, this is a classic-style RPG that plays great with a fairly typical gamepad layout. But on closer inspection there’s a few things worth pointing out.

The developers have done an excellent job implementing full Steam Input API support. This allows the game to automatically adjust the button layout depending on the current gameplay mode. For example, in menus a D-Pad appears for easy navigation, while navigating the world uses the more comfortable Analog Stick. In the screenshot above there are buttons with special icons for calling your fast travel pals. Then in battle mode the fast travel buttons automatically disappear. All of the possible actions in each mode were easy to discover and lay out because of their Steam Input implementation.

Stardew Valley

Here's another RPG with a significant percentage of players using Steam and Xbox controllers. But since it’s a native PC game its control scheme is anything but typical.

In this game the X button uses your farming tools. They're used rapidly and extremely often, so we enlarged the button to make it easy to press without looking. The arrow buttons cycle through your quick-bar items, and each of the sub menus have been given a helpful icon for quick access. The top center of the screen is sometimes used for dialog, so we moved the Steam button to the upper left. We also moved the keyboard button which is used for giving everything on your farm personalized names. The rest of the screen acts as a cursor trackpad for easily organizing the inventory.

Session

Let’s examine one final action game with an extremely specialized control scheme. Session is a skateboarding simulator that entered early access last week. The way that each foot is controlled by an Analog Stick gives it an intuitive feel on mobile, almost like playing with a Fingerboard.

Tricks are activated using various move combinations with both thumbs, just like controlling both feet. The placement of the X and A buttons let you naturally push off with the left or right foot, and leaning is done with the Left and Right Trigger buttons. In the future we’d like to experiment with leaning using the gyroscope so that we can steer while doing our goofy foot pop shuvits.

Remote Play Optimized

After adding default configurations to this long list of games we’ve seen a steady increase in players using Remote Play. We've also added store hubs for phone, tablet, and TV, in addition to a Library filter so that it's easy to find the best games while on those devices.

We can't wait to feature even more games on these pages, so have a look at our partner documentation to create a default touch configuration for your game. This also includes a new API for detecting the type of device used so that the game is able to adjust resolution and UI as needed.

This could be an advantage when Valve launches its own streaming service.

 

[Sentinel]

What do you mean? That's their streaming service. It's free!

 

[Konjad]

Is Valve the only company that updates games 20 years after release? I wonder if they fixed the bug where a Combine vehicle's tire is clipping through the ground.

Serious Sam devs are still updating even the first SS once in a long while.

There was also some strategy game dev, but I forgot who.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Is Valve the only company that updates games 20 years after release? I wonder if they fixed the bug where a Combine vehicle's tire is clipping through the ground.

I wish more devs would. I'd be much more likely to buy a product if I had a good indication that it may still be getting bugfixes years later.

 

[Konjad]

Is Valve the only company that updates games 20 years after release? I wonder if they fixed the bug where a Combine vehicle's tire is clipping through the ground.

I wish more devs would. I'd be much more likely to buy a product if I had a good indication that it may still be getting bugfixes years later.

I'm sure you'd find some other excuse then.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Is Valve the only company that updates games 20 years after release? I wonder if they fixed the bug where a Combine vehicle's tire is clipping through the ground.

I wish more devs would. I'd be much more likely to buy a product if I had a good indication that it may still be getting bugfixes years later.

I'm sure you'd find some other excuse then.

I already buy any game that's tagged with cats, so I doubt it.

 

[LESS T_T]

Steam ded https://steamstat.us/

 

[Reinhardt]

not anymore

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Trying out the new experiment, scrolled down and saw this

Spoiler

Spoiler

HoboForEternity

 

[HoboForEternity]

Trying out the new experiment, scrolled down and saw this

Spoiler

Spoiler

HoboForEternity

thats cool, i just posted that like 2 hours ago. So they post reviews by your friends now.

 

[LESS T_T]

Update on Steam Lab's Deep Dive: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamLabs/announcements/detail/1589132147039074356

Deep Dive: Updated matching algorithms & new controls


Hey everyone! Today we shipped some updates to Deep Dive, based on your feedback.

Performance
Our first build was a little rough around the edges; we've since made some optimizations that should make results considerably faster. We're still working on further improvements, so let us know what you think.

Layout
We aim to make Deep Dive's three types of recommendations clearer with a new layout where each recommender method appears in its own column, topped by a clearly labeled header. Additionally, the freed space makes the whole layout more compact, cutting down on scrolling when using smaller displays.

Mix & Match Recommenders
You now have the ability to mix and match recommenders. Simply click on the header of each column to rotate between Very Similar, Somewhat Similar, and Similar Gem matches.

New Keystone Tag Matcher Algorithm
In the previous version we used three recommender algorithms: the default algorithm Steam uses on More Like This pages, a loose match algorithm that would return 2nd-degree matches, and the Gems matcher that looks for well-loved but little-known games.

The loose match algorithm was previously a bit of a performance drain. It would first find a dozen or so matches using the default algorithm, and then it would re-run the default algorithm on all of those matches. Not surprisingly, this takes about 12 times as long as a regular query.

We've since replaced that algorithm with a new matcher that more closely matches one of those found in the original Diving Bell prototype. This is what Lars calls the Keystone Tag matcher, which is an algorithm that *only* considers tag similarity, and in early testing it seems pretty good at returning games that closely match the structure of the chosen game. Let us know what you think!

We've relabeled the algorithms accordingly:

Previous version of Deep Dive

• Very Similar --> More Like This
  
• Somewhat Similar --> Loose matcher
  
• Similar Gems --> Gems

New version of Deep Dive

• Very Similar --> Keystone Tag matcher
  
• Somewhat Similar --> More Like This
  
• Similar Gems --> Gems

Thank you for your testing and feedback!
Steam Labs thrives on feedback. If you have opinions about what we've been working on, please share your thoughts.