Steam, the most popular store/distribution platform for PC-based gaming, announced that it now has more than 100 million active accounts, which is up by 25 million from the 75 million figure announced in January. Valve Software, the developers of the Steam platform, revealed the new user figure today as part of a much larger announcement of the major Steam Discovery Update.
Valve also announced today that there are now more than 3,700 games in total on Steam. More than 1,300 games have been added so far in 2014, which is up considerably compared to last year when only 304 titles were added to Steam in the first nine months of the year.
The most obvious aspect of the update is the new home page. It now includes personalized recommendations based on your gameplay habits and new search tools. You're also able to customize and filter out games that you already own or don't have any interest in.
Another big addition is that Steam now supports Curators, individuals and/or groups that publish reviews and recommendations on a Steam public forum. You can follow these Curators to keep up with their recommendations and rate their reviews.
In an interview with Gamespot, Valve stated that this update comes as a result of its conversations with developers, publishers, and customers.
"For a long time, we knew we had a throughput issue where we were not publishing enough of the submissions to Steam," Valve's UI Designer Alden Kroll said. "Roughly one year ago we started introducing new tools and systems to correct that and, almost immediately, discoverability was identified as the next big issue we would need to tackle. Most developers will rightly want to see proof that the new system works. But, at the same time, they are fully aware that this issue needs to be addressed."
It remains to be seen how these wholesale changes will pan out, moving forward. I think I can hear the trolls beating their war drums already...
