Steam Store Overhaul Reportedly Coming Soon With These Changes

According to a new report, Valve may be planning an overhaul for its Steam store on PC. According to a developer-only post shared on NeoGAF (via Kotaku), Valve is planning a refresh of the home page design itself, while it will also introduce a prominent "Popular Among Friends" section.

Valve may also be planning to introduce more Steam curator options. According to the blog post, the curator program isn't working as good as it could be right now, as titles are not necessarily being recommended, despite curators providing "valuable information" to users.

With the new update, Steam curators will apparently be able to clearly indicate whether their post is meant to be seen as recommended, not recommended, or only informational. "This helps us better understand whether a curation should be used to promote a game on the front page of Steam, or if it's intended to be informational that should primarily appear on the individual product page," Valve said.

Among the other reportedly planned new features is a section on the home page that shows new releases that have cracked the top-seller list. There will also be a new left-hand column on the home page to include links to places like new releases, top-sellers, recently updated titles, upcoming releases, and more. Read the full NeoGAF forum post to learn more about the supposedly planned features.

Highlighted Steam Store Update Changes (via NeoGAF)

Home Page Visual Refresh

• The Steam home page will be getting a visual refresh to use bigger game images in some places, add some new ways of surfacing games, and remove some visual clutter.

Friends Activity

• We're adding a prominent new 'Popular Among Friends' section right to the home page that will highlight what your friends have been buying and playing.

More Steam Curator Options

• We've noticed that more than a few Steam Curators are using the curator feature to provide valuable information about games, while not necessarily recommending the title. We're going to give Steam Curators the tools to indicate whether their post is recommended, not recommended, or simply informational. This helps us better understand whether a curation should be used to promote a game on the front page of Steam, or if it's intended to be informational that should primarily appear on the individual product page.

The new Steam store update is said to arrive "in a few weeks," following a feedback period from developers, so it may not be much longer until everyone gets to see the new design.

Steam's latest major overhaul, the Discovery update, arrived in September 2014. As its name alludes to, this update was themed around new features that were aimed at helping people find games more easily, which was an issue considering there are multiple thousands of games on Steam.

What do you think about the Steam Store's layout and design? Is it time for an overhaul? Let us know in the comments below!