It’s hard enough keeping track of new and upcoming games on Steam, but what about games you already own, or have played, that get updates? Unless you were really keen, that was almost impossible. Until now!
Valve has added a new section to the Steam store’s front page, right underneath the “Featured” section, that highlights some existing games that have received updates (patches, new levels, DLC, etc). There are three shown at any one time, but you can expand it to show a complete log.
Because it covers the entire marketplace, it’s obviously going to be full of games you’ve never played (or even heard of), but hey, even a casual scroll told me there’d been an update to the Just Cause 2 multiplayer mod, which is nice.
Comments
14 responses to “Steam’s Neat Way Of Reminding You To Go Back And Play Your Old Games”
More clutter isn’t going to result in greater clarity. Here’s an idea: why not let us completely customise the home page, so we can have as much or as little as we want on it?
So it shows 3 games at apparent random out of all the games that have been recently updated. If by some chance there happens to a game that I played a reasonably long time ago (hence the description as ‘old’) that also happens to have been recently updated which I guess might happen but is probably pretty unlikely for an old game, there’s a very small chance it might randomly show up in the list of 3 games on the front page and remind me that it exists.
Yeah, I’m not sure that really ticks enough boxes to qualify as helping…
It shows 3 most recent.
Oh so it’s even less useful then?
Yeah I just looked at it, and was seeing these games I don’t even own…I’m glad I was reminded that these games I don’t own were updated so I can go back and play them…after I purchase them first 😛
If you click on “all”, you can then filter it by games you own.
Okay then that has some degree of utility, is there some way to tell it to only show games you own that have updated in that initial list or do you have to load the full list & apply the filter each time?
Well, I mean, when you click on it, there’s two giant white buttons, one saying something like ALL and the other YOUR GAMES. We’re talking an extra few milliseconds of work here on something you’ll probably check once a week.
Well I pay attention to what updates on my system so the whole thing is kind of redundant to me but I was just thinking that the utility of it being able to display your owned games by default would have been nice to have because as it stands it’s pretty much just advertising under another name
Right. I guess the main point from Valve’s end though is my angel with the headline; they want you to see games you might have skipped/forgotten about but which have got updates which might finally interest you…
It’s a little odd, considering most people on Steam have their games auto update and it’s noted as a footnote at the bottom. The added section pretty much just states games in general that have updated, not just games you own.
Clutter? yes, but then I rarely scroll down past the featured games. They’d be better off dumping it down where the Greenlight and demos are featured at the bottom.
I don’t see any value in this. It just adds more junk to the already junk-filled front page. Come on Steam, pick up your game.
What is wrong? I have always wanted steam to tell me what the update changed.
It always has, in the patch notes that come out when Steam automatically updates the game. I also just clicked the See My Games tab and it doesn’t even bring up the latest updates my game has received. The whole Steam UI needs a drastic overhaul – I’m talking back to bedrock.