Valve has added new discoverability features to Steam for studios. These changes, according to Valve, were made based on explicit feedback provided by developers, some during Gamescom earlier in August.
Both changes give studios control of what related items appear on a title's store page. Now, they can choose what studio, franchise, or publisher gets highlighted underneath a written description.
For example, PlayStation could opt to put Assassin's Creed Shadows in the "More Like This" tab under Ghost of Tsushima. Conversely, Ubisoft could do the same with God of War (2018) for Assassin's Creed Valhalla.
This marks the newest (and final) series of tweaks to Steam for August. Over the past month, the storefront has seen changes to its store page descriptions and player reviews, now displaying whether or not a reviewed game was experienced primarily through the computer or a Steam Deck.
Per Valve, this discoverability change "specifies the set of games to draw from, as well as the sort order for those games, and set one or more of the included games to force to the front of the list."
In the 'special settings' tab of the Store Editor, developers can choose what makes sense for that particular game. However, Valve stressed a developer (or publisher, or franchise) must have a specific page set up first before this can be set.
After related titles are locked in, studios can choose the listing order (top-seller, price, relevance, etc.) or manually override the sort order and move specific games around in the set. Manually placed games will show up before others.
The second change lets developers highlight one DLC item "in a bigger way." With this, a game's newest (or most-known) DLC release can now be pinned, or an upcoming post-launch item (like an expansion) to draw players' attention to it.
Similar to the related tab for full games, developers just have to go to the Store Editor's "special settings" tab and select "DLC."
There are pre-selected reasons to choose from, such as "new" or "upcoming" DLC. Valve said it is open to suggestions from developers on other DLC callouts to implement in the future.
More information on Steam's store page changes can be read here.
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