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Valve overhauls Steam Curators, gives community more control

The Steam Curators program allows players to discover new games based on the tastes of some of their favorite personalities and writers such as Rock, Paper, Shotgun, and Jacksepticeye. However, Valve has received feedback from users hoping for more choice and customization, and a bunch of new features are now on the way to make the experience even better.

“Over the three years since the introduction of Steam Curators, we’ve gathered a lot of feedback from all kinds of perspectives,” Valve said in the announcement. “We’ve heard from players, from curators, from streamers, from game developers, and from all kinds of other tastemakers and content creators.”

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To make it easier to discover great games in the genres you’re interested in, Steam will now display your followed Curators’ recommendations on specific genre and tagged pages instead of just the home page. Reviews for a selection of these games will also appear on Steam, so you’ll be able to easily get more information about a particular title before deciding to purchase it. Curators will also be able to bundle certain games they feel go well together, so you won’t have to search for recommendations individually.

Game developers will also be able to get their games into the hands of Curators more easily with recent changes to “Curator Connect.” They’ll now be able to search for Curators based on the tags they use the most, and they’ll be able to see a snapshot of each Curator to verify their identity before sending a game their way. Curators will no longer need keys to gain access to the games, either, with a simple “accept” and “decline” list available for them on Steam.

Valve expects the changes to Steam Curators to be available for a limited number of users in closed beta for the next few weeks before eventually rolling out the new features to everyone.

“The Steam Curators that are invited to participate in the beta are free to share their thoughts publicly, so you may see some screenshots or write-ups from these Curators as they explore the new features and discuss them with the community,” Valve added.

And if you’re looking for something spooky to play this Halloween, Steam has plenty of great options. The platform’s Halloween sale includes discounts on games like Prey, Dying Light, Doom, and more.

Gabe Gurwin
Gabe Gurwin has been playing games since 1997, beginning with the N64 and the Super Nintendo. He began his journalism career…
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