Since 2016 there have been bundles on Steam, following the lead of third-party stores like Humble Bundle, but they have primarily been of a company's own work. There have been a few exceptions, but those were all hand-curated by Valve, the company known for the term 'valve time'. Now, however, they have created a tool to let developers and publishers create their own collaborative Steam bundles on Steam.
The new collaborative bundle tool lets developers create a bundle with at least one of their own games, and enable 'collaborative mode'. They are then given a special link that they can send off to collaborators who can add their games to the bundle through Steamworks, wherein details are then finalized by the bundle creator. Before it goes public though, everyone has to agree on all details, including games, name, royalty split, and more, and only after everyone has signed off can it be published
Collaborative bundles have become popular for more than just discounts like they were originally on stores like Humble Bundle, especially when developer-led. Many independent developers like to group games with similar ones, the idea being to that fans of one game are more likely to be interested in the other and that it is a way to help players discover games they are interested in. One example previously on Steam would be the 'Keep Your Politics' bundle, which groups several games that tackle political themes - 1979 Revolution: Black Friday, Orwell: Keeping an Eye on You, Not Tonight, Bury Me, My Love, Headliner: NoviNews, and Orwell's Animal Farm. Setting this up required working with Valve employees, but a future one could be done by developers on their own.
More famously, however, might be bundles that have been created to support a common cause. We have seen a few of these recently, and they have been developer-led on itch.io for causes such as Racial Justice, supporting queer developers, and Palestinian aid. The ability to organize these types of bundles directly on Steam could give them further reach, publicity, and avoid the issue of Steam key reselling that comes up with including Steam keys in those bundles.
If you want to learn more about Steam collaborative bundles, you can check out the full Steamworks post here.
