Steam, a platform famous for its ultimate library of games, community discussion, and game developing, has recently changed its algorithm after the platform’s developer, Valve Corporation, has experimented with about 5% of the Steam users.
Users may see the changes when they head over to the platform by looking at the recommendations offered by the platform. The list of recommendations suggested by the platform will be more personalized to cater to the need of every visitor. Rather than providing the list of the most popular games of the week, Steam will give a list of games that fit the users’ preferences.
Valve did not give out many details on exactly how these newly-applied changes will work (perhaps to avoid the system exploitation). One of the changes is in the expansion of time duration that is used to measure popularity, which formerly produces unforeseeable visibility for some of the games.
The changes also fix some bugs, including the bug where the “similar by tags” was more affected by the top-rated games than intended.
The newly altered system was based on a test done on an estimated 5% of users from the platforms. Analysis from the experiment shows that around 15% of tested users were prone to click on the suggested games. This action results in an increase of unique traffic to a distinct game by 75% and grows the numbers of unique visitors to a game by 47%, which suggests that this is highly beneficial for both developers and gamers.
According to the platform’s developer, the highly personalized recommendation brings in an even greater variety of games being shown in that particular section. Plus, the users’ impression will be more equally distributed among them. Hence, the experimental rollout is considered successful enough to extend towards the entire platform.
The developer also promises to continually make changes and conduct similar tests like this one to enhance the platform’s existing quality.
The developer’s statement makes many users hopeful and expectant that more detailed information about these impending changes will be revealed, as the developer’s lack of communication has always been an issue particularly among the other developers.
There will also be a few changes to the new Steam Library. These new changes will display the revised version of games owned by the players so that they can keep coming back to their existing sets.
Also, the new library will provide several new features to help players track and arrange their library.
The developer confirmed that the changes would take effect on the public beta on September 17.
