It would appear that Valve has stealthily updated the Steam storefront. The Discovery 2.0 update, as it's called, brings a sleek new UI and a host of new features to help you figure out what game you want to play next.
The featured games at the top of the storefront now display their tags, a brief description, and four screenshots displayed next to the standard header image. Valve cracking down on misleading screenshots on game store pages makes a whole lot more sense now.
Games that you already own will be filtered out of the new and bestselling lists, a feature that seems far more useful in actually using the Steam charts to find new games to play. You can also filter out movies, VR games, Early Access games, and any other tags you don't want to see cluttering up the page.
Right below the featured games is now a section for games on sale. Below that, you will see a section displaying your friend's recent activities, and then below that you'll see your discovery queue.
My favorite addition to this update is the curator rehaul. Curator pages have been completely redesigned. You can check the TechRaptor curator page here to see for yourself.
The curator recommendations on the front page have also been expanded, showing you the header for the game, which curator is recommending it and a quote of their full review. It will feed your curators' latest recommendations and reviews into your front page now.
The "recently updated" section of the storefront can now be filtered to only show recently-updated games that you own. The regular new releases have been cordoned off onto their own page, which shows Valve actually making an effort to implement at least a modicum of quality control on the Steam page.
For more information and a detailed look at all the changes, check out this page.
Quick Take
Personally, I'm pretty excited for this new update. It looks like Valve is taking some steps to improve known problems with the Steam store. I'm also a person who enjoys just browsing the Steam store to find a game to play from time to time, and it seems like this update is going to make that a much smoother process.
What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.
