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Steam making changes to Curators system

Steam making changes to Curators system

Valve has announced some alterations coming to the Steam Curator’s system.

Announced in a post on its blog, the firm revealed that it is going to be making changes for users, Curators as well as developers.

First is is what content Curators are able to create, as well as where this information is available. Information from these sources will be visible on the pages for individual games as opposed to just user home pages.

Furthermore, video content from Curators will also be able to be embedded to accompany reviews. These write-ups will also be gathered into list features, such as ’10 games to play while waiting for Witcher 4’.

On the curators side of things, Valve says that the feedback it has received is that these personalities and brands need to feel rewarded and have a meaningful impact. Curators will now be able to customise their home on Steam, such as having a personalised background as well as selected games, lists and tags.

In addition to the above, Curators will be able to see how their reviews impact user behaviour on Steam via graphs. The firm writes: "We all know that graphs solve everything, so yes, we're adding more of them". We're not sure if this is a joke or not, but might be an actual insight into how Steam works.

Last on the list of changes is those that impact game developers. Valve says that feedback from this group suggests that they need a way of getting their project in front of the right audience. Meanwhile, Curators are saying it’s hard to reach out to game makers.

As a solution to this, Valve is rolling out Curator Connect, whereby developers can send Curators copies of their game directly. They will be able to look through to the social media accounts of these personalities to help verify whether they are legitimate or not.

These features are rolling out in a closed beta with “a few dozen” Steam Curators to figure out where to go from here.

The Curators system was introduced back in 2014 as part of Steam’s Discovery Update.


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.