Valve is working on some improvements to the Big Picture mode and some other elements of the Steam digital distribution client as reported by PCGamesN.
Yesterday, Valve had a presentation in Spain at GameBCN, a company based in Barcelona, Spain that focuses on training & mentoring for video game developers in Southern Europe. A game developer by the name of Toni DomÍnguez attended the event and shared some interesting details with the rest of the world from Valve's presentation.
https://twitter.com/AlegreDominguez/status/956164892805001216
Mr. DomÍnguez stated that the event opened with Valve saying that they're "still making games", a mildly amusing claim as the Washington-based company's most recently released game was Dota 2 way back in July of 2013. (Thankfully, it appears that the attendees managed to avoid any jokes or questions about Half-Life 3.) The presentation talked a bit about the upcoming update to their platform's interface, something that's apparently been in the works for some time now.
Big Picture Mode has some improvements in the works in the form of a new interface. We won't just be seeing a UI overhaul, either. Steam Reviews are planned to get better implementation, an area that Valve has recently been focused on improving. Developers & users alike will have a new calendar feature for individual games which should make it easy to keep track of in-game events, news, and scheduled updates.
Lastly, he brought up a question about how the digital distribution platform could have games such as Genital Jousting on the platform considering the depiction of, well, genitals. In short, Valve makes good use of their lawyers in knowing exactly where they have to draw the line and the game in question (along with others like Shower With Your Dad Simulator) apparently pass muster. Unfortunately, there isn't any recording available of the presentation so that's all we've learned so far.
As for Mr. DomÍnguez, he's currently finishing up education in programming & video game design. You can check out his website here. He's also made a single-player puzzle game titled About Elise available on Steam completely for free, so check it out if that game sounds like your kind of fun.
What do you think of the tidbits of information we got about Valve's plans for the future of Steam? Do you think the platform is heading in the right direction? Do you use Big Picture mode or do you stick to the classic client? Let us know in the comments below!
