What you need to know
- Valve has updated its recommendation algorithms in Steam to show a more diverse set of games.
- You'll now see fewer popular games, which many gamers have complained about in the past.
- The change is live for every Steam user now.
Valve recently updated the way Steam handles recommendations to serve up a more diverse set of games. Now, you'll see more variety in your recommendations, rather than being flooded with only popular titles. From Valve:
We found some bugs, such as the "Similar by Tags" section of the Recommendation Feed, which had a bug that top-rated games (a category that doesn't change very often) were driving too much of what players saw. We changed that. We also found that in some places our timescale used to calculate popularity was too narrow, resulting in unpredictable visibility for some games. So we expanded the time period we use in those calculations.
Valve said that it initially tested its changes with five percent of users in recent weeks. Within that group, the "Recommended for You" section "became less biased towards popular games" and showed more relevant games for each user. Users were also more likely to click on the games shown in their recommendations.
In addition, areas of Steam that rely heavily on on tags, like the "More Like This" section, saw more users purchase and wishlist a "broader set of games."
These changes are live now for all Steam users.
