News Steam Library Beta and Events Coming Sept 17

Mor

Mor

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So, the day has finally come and Valve has announced the release date for the beta version of the new Library UI and the new Events tool. Please take a look at the announcement.

Today we're pleased to announce that the New Steam Library open beta will start on Thursday, September 17th – all players will be able to opt-in and try out the new features.
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Untapped potential already in your library
The new Steam library was built with the belief that our libraries are valuable to us – for some customers, they contain more than fifteen years of games. From your absolute favorite AAA title that all your friends are playing, to that solo indie art project that only you seem to love, your Steam library represents your gaming history.

But, a good library shouldn't just be dusty shelves, it has to be a fun place to explore and find whatever it is that you're looking for. Whether you want to keep up to date about what's happening with your games, find a game to play with your friends, or explore what's happening in your game's community, your library should support you.

Today we want to introduce you to some of the biggest new library features and explain how they’re going help do just that.
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A brand new way to look at things The first thing you'll probably notice is that we're launching a gorgeous new landing page for your library. The new library home gives you quick access to game updates, recently played games, friends activity and your collections.
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Stay connected with your games and friends We're making it easier for you to stay on top of the changes happening to your games and who is playing what. One of things we know you love about Steam is being able to engage directly with your games as they evolve over time. The new library makes it simple to see not just if a game has been updated but, with the new events feature, what that update is and why you should boot it up and give it a shot.



We're also making it easy to see what you're friends have been up to and which games they are currently playing. You can find out what games your friends have been playing right on the library home page, and see what games they are currently playing from your games list. With all this new information, you shouldn't miss out on the tantalizing water-cooler conversation about everyone's weekend replay of Portal 2.
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Stay in-the-know about your games with Events
Odds are, you've got games in your library that had incredible updates or limited-time events and you never even knew. Well, those days are over. We wanted to strike a balance between an in-library event feature that let you know about all the great things happening with the games you already own without bombarding you with notifications.



Showcasing these updates is valuable to players and also developers. If you’re a dev, it hasn’t been easy to let someone know that you've just shipped a big update to your game, especially if they've moved on to something else. Now it is. Starting today, developers will have access to all new event creation tools that will feed directly into the new library (you can read more about the new event tools here).

Not every event needs to be a big update, though. The new event tool gives you the ability to connect with players and share other things like a developer live-stream or a community challenge, or even highlight interesting fan art.
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Stay tuned for more information
We're taking the first step today by giving developers access to new editor tools for events and announcements, as well as upgrading the events and announcements pages for players.

While we’re putting the finishing touches on the new library you can follow the Steam blog for more updates and in-depth information about the new library before we open the public beta on September 17th.

-The Steam Team
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Steam Library Beta Coming Sept 17

And that's not all as tomorrow a new tool will be released for the Steam Labs, Want to learn more about "Deep Dive"? Read Lars, the creator of the tool.
 
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Mor

Mor

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Deques said:
A beta? So soon?
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It has been in closed beta for a while but it's ready to launch for the big public.
New references were non-stop this last weeks, Games have been adding new assets for the UI for a long time and it has now a really great number.

So yeah, this time is for real.
 
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Mor

Mor

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Not only this blogpost was added but also one for developers about the new "Events" tool and how it works. Let's see it.



Hello game creators,

Today, we've rolled out some major updates to the tools that you use in Steam when posting events and announcements about your games. This update comes just two weeks ahead of the new Steam Library, which will be entering open beta on Sept 17. (To learn more about the upcoming changes to Steam Library, please see this other post from today).

We know that communication with players is important to the way that many games are developed and enjoyed today. And we've been listening to a lot of feedback from game developers about better tools and channels to accomplish just that. We're pleased to announce the roll-out of these new tools and how they feed into multiple channels across Steam to better help connect you with your audience.

This post is a brief overview of the new tools and the role they play in better connecting you with your audience.

Store, Community, & Library
Events and announcements play a prominent role in the new Steam Library, helping players stay up to date with the games already in their libraries. As a developer, this gives you the opportunity to communicate with and re-engage players when you have an exciting moment such as a game update, community challenge, special announcement, tournament, or other kinds of events and activities.

Of course events and announcements will continue to appear in the places you already expect them to; on your store page, in your community hub, and in the activity feed of players that follow your game. And when the new library rolls out, there will be additional visibility for your events and announcements.

New editor tools
When you visit your Steam Community hub or Steamworks app page, and select 'post announcement', you will see a new interface for authoring your event or announcement. These new tools are designed to help you categorize and configure any kind of communication, that you wish to make about your game, including game updates, announcements, live-streams, community challenges, and any other kind of interesting activity happening in your game that you think your players would be interested in hearing about.

This updated editor also makes it easy to format the text of your description, embed YouTube videos, insert images, and to stage announcements and events to go live at a specified future date.



Additionally, these tools let you configure broadcast settings to white-list particular accounts to stream to your store page and event page. You can also export and import csv localization files for streamlining your translation process.

New image support
All new events and announcements (except patch notes) now require a 800px x 450px “cover image” which will represent your event in lists, on your store page, community hub, and in the new library. We’ve built a handy image resizer tool right into the workflow, so you don’t have to worry about having exactly the right size image.

Here's one example of how these new cover images images will be used:



You’ll also find powerful new preview tools that show you the full event detail page as it will appear to players. This new format, will give you space to communicate the excitement of your update or announcement, along with easy links to buy the game or play the game right from the event page.



These new event tools are available immediately to all game developers. For more details on using these tools, along with some best practices, please see Events & Announcements Tools in Steamworks documentation.

And finally, don’t forget to upload new branding images in preparation for the new Steam Library beta if you have not done so yet (you can read more about updating your game's artwork here).


Cheers!
- The Steam Team
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Steam Community :: Group :: Steamworks Development
 
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Wildebeet

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I hate the look of the new steam.
A) I don't like the poster/DVD box style icons. At all.
B) Any random day I expect my library view to suddenly look pretty ugly, since they're going to nuke all my hundreds of custom grids, and try to cram horizontal icons into vertical shapes. What happens to all the old games that a developer isn't going to come back to and fix the grid for?

I doubt they'll include any support for old grid style, which would be a huge fuck off to the people creating and using tens of thousands of images to make their libraries look cool.

And, I just installed steam on a new linux box to see how it goes, and was surprised at how ugly the stock icons are. And I strongly suspect that they're going to bork the linux client and it'll just not work for months.

Some of the features are interesting I guess.
 
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Mor

Mor

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Microtrailers experiment got promoted and now it has new options.

And new Searching filters are up too.




Looks like we got a new Blogpost this time about Steam Labs new wave of experiments.



Sept 5, 2019 – Recent experimentation in Steam Labs takes shape in the form of both updated and new experiments, plus an upcoming experiment we're excited to announce is in the works.

Experiment 001: Micro Trailers – Now Available for Every Game


We’ve been delighted to work with indie game developer Ichiro Lambe of Dejobaan Games to bring his enthusiasm for game discovery to our experiments in Steam Labs. Ichiro first began experimenting with ways to explore the Steam catalog with his 2015 website, WhatsOnSteam.com and his 2016 Twitter bot, @MicroTrailers. His experience provides us with an informed perspective on content discovery design and tools that serve both developers and customers. Steam Labs is a result of our collaboration, and together we look forward to seeing where your feedback leads us.

Ichiro created two of Labs' first experiments, 001: Micro Trailers and 003: Automatic Show. These experiments offer 6-second quick-cuts of game trailers to give viewers a way to soak in a week's worth of new titles over the course of a lunch break. The initial experiment covered a few hundred games across 15 categories. We now bring this experiment to its logical next step: a micro trailer for every game on the Steam Store, categorized into nearly 400 tags. You can now browse all your favorite titles by tag, from games with Tanks to Twin Stick Shooters, and get an eyeful of the latest launches for each.



Introducing Experiment 004: Search


Today’s Lab Update includes a new Experiment 004: Search, now available to help you discover titles on Steam. When enabled, it will place your browser into in Labs Mode, allowing you to access the experimental features whenever you search on Steam. Labs Mode is remembered on a per-browser basis. As a reminder of the mode, these views feature a banner which includes links to provide feedback, or to return to standard search mode on Steam.

Experimental search features include price and sale filters, enabling people to narrow Steam Store search results to titles below a specific price, or those which are currently available at a discount. We’ve also introduced filters which enable Steam users to exclude owned, wished-for, or ignored items from displayed results once logged in.

Narrowing by tag has also received an update, with additional correlated tags listed in order of frequency. The inclusion of result counts makes it easier to see the effect of tag filters in advance of selecting them. Additionally, searching by tag now uses an updated algorithm which weights the value of chosen tags more heavily when sorting by relevance.



And last but not least, our Search experiment offers infinite scroll when displaying search results! No more clicking tiny page numbers; you can now use your mouse wheel to breeze through your search results. Independent of Steam Labs, infinite scroll has also been added to DLC, Curator, and Franchise views on Steam.


Coming Soon – Experiment 005: Deep Dive

We’re excited to share that we’re also working with indie game developer Lars Doucet of Level Up Labs to bring his novel Diving Bell prototype to Steam Labs, where it will directly leverage the underlying APIs that fuel its recommendations and related game information. The new experiment will offer an exploratory interface to discover new games based on their similarity to familiar ones, plus the ability to use these recommendations themselves as a jumping-off point to dive even deeper into what Steam has to offer. 🐬



As always, we hope you’ll check out these latest and upcoming additions to Steam Labs and let us know what you think in the discussions. Your feedback shapes our experimentation and informs the ideas which become a part Steam for keeps.
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Steam Community :: Steam Blog :: Events
 
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Mor

Mor

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daxy said:
Anyway, I'm looking forward to the library refresh and more labs stuff. Very cool to have stuff like this iterated on with public feedback.
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Indeed, the idea that people should participate within the development of the platform is an amazing idea, active feedback, community participation, storm ideas on the experiments discussions....this is something absolutely beautiful to see, it's fantastic that instead of developing this tools in secret they just went to "hey, you know what? here are some things we are working on, it's beta but let's have some fun together"

SteamLabs was an amazing announcement.
 
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Deleted member 113

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I finally checked the Steam Labs section, after the new filters for search options kicked-in, and I must say I really enjoyed most of the things they're testing, particularly the Automatic Show.
It was a great way to quickly check some new games, with an easily available, clickable link to take you directly to the game's page, and I ended up discovering a game or two (while noticing I have plenty of cool stuff that I haven't even started playing :grinning-face-with-smiling-eyes:).

I hope Valve follows through with this one (although, sadly, it appears they've somewhat given up on the original format, and are already asking about 1:30 min. videos with voice-overs, instead of these montages of short clips of games in quick succession).

If they want to do videos with a human element, I wish they would do a "1 Up Show" kind of weekly video podcast, showcasing new and future Steam releases, maybe with a quick interview or two with indie developers. I know I would watch it. :)

As for the search options, it's great that I can exclude games I already own, and games I ignored. But. currently, it only ignores games I specifically marked to ignore. not games from ignored developers/publishers/franchises (who still show up, with that faded look and white "warning" stripe).
Hopefully this will be improved in the future.
 
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beep boop

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Deep dive seems like a thing I've seen recently. But I thought it was that guy who came up with it was just a contractor for Valve. Maybe a happy coincidence?
 
d00d3n

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The "sort by recent activity" option in the leftmost part of the UI seems much more useful than the previous version of it. You get your game activity for every month of the current year, and then yearly going backward. You can sort games in the exact order by release date or activity in the home window as well, and both years and dates are clearly denoted for every title as you scroll down,

I am looking forward to discovering what games I actually own with these (and more) great new features!
 
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