No Steam Dev Days this year, says Valve -- look to GDC instead

This time last year, roughly 1,200 game developers were gearing up to attend Valve's inaugural Steam Dev Days developer conference in Seattle.

It was billed as an industry-only, off-the-record event, but curious outsiders were able to follow a #SteamDevDays Twitter hashtag to catch photos and chatter about Valve's developer pitches for things like the Steam Box and VR game development.

So why haven't we heard anything about Valve's plans for this year's Steam developer conference? Because, simply enough, the company doesn't see a reason to host one.

"Steam Dev Days was a great way to brief a large number of Steam developers," a Valve representative told Gamasutra, explaining that hosting Dev Days made more sense in a year when Valve debuted an array of new technology. 

"This year our focus will be a bit different, so we are planning a larger than usual presence at GDC. So, there will not be a Steam Dev Days this year, but we will certainly consider doing it again in the future."

If you missed Dev Days last year, know Valve posted video presentations from the conference online a month after the event that include talks featuring notable Valve and non-Valve developers like Oculus VR's Michael Abrash, Klei Entertainment's Jamie Cheng and Dejobaan Games' Ichiro Lambe.

Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Tech.