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Valve rolls out Steam News Hub

Valve rolls out Steam News Hub

Another one of Valve's Steam Labs experiments is being released to all users.

In a post on its website, the company said it is rolling out its News Hub to players. This is a "flexible and personalised" feed designed to inform you about all the games you play, have wishlisted, follow or are recommended. At least, that's how News Hub will behave by default, covering topics like patch notes, weekend events and updates. You can also add updates to your Google Calendar or iCal so that you can keep time free to play upcoming content.

There are a variety of customisation options, too, meaning that users can tweak what appears and how.

"Of course, the whole goal behind the Steam News Hub is to give you a personalised view of gaming news, so you get to choose what kind of content you want to see and what kind you don’t," Valve wrote.

"If you wish, you can ignore individual news sources from within your feed by selecting the little menu below a post by that source and selecting 'mute' to exclude their news from your feed."

This is just the latest experiment that Valve has rolled out having previously tested them in Steam Labs since its July 2019 launch. News Hub was released into Labs in March of this year, before being followed that same month by an interactive recommendation engine. Other tests include Play Next and a filter for Chat. This addition to Steam Chat was rolled out to all users in October. 

Last week, Valve revealed another Labs experiment, once again focusing on discoverability on Steam.


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.