Steam is swapping its curated discounts section for a more personal touch, and it could be "a big win" for indies

Valve has announced big changes coming to the way Steam presents sales to you, and it might be good news for finding your next favorite game. The storefront is dropping its more curated range of midweek, weekend, and daily deals in "early 2027" and replacing it with more "dynamic and personalized recommendations." While such trends towards the omniscience of the algorithm can be a little frightening, the CEO of indie publisher Hooded Horse has already expressed belief that the move is "a big win for both players and developers."

Steam has already been experimenting over the past few months, swapping out some of its curated deal spots in the 'Discounts and Events' section for more personalized recommendations. Valve reports that this allowed it "to show 10x more games to customers in a given day," and that resulted in "meaningful increases in store page visits, wishlist, and cart additions." That's great for developers, but Valve also expresses confidence it's a better experience on the side of the consumer as well.

"The constraint of a manually managed calendar doesn't make as much sense with such diverse customer tastes and so many relevant deals for customers available at any given time," Valve explains. It anticipates that the old style of curated calendar of discounts and events "will fully cease" sometime early in 2027. "We don't believe this will be perfect right away, but we are confident the new system will result in better outcomes for customers and developers."

With a wide range of beloved indie games ranging from Against the Storm and Manor Lords to Endless Legend 2 and 9 Kings under its remit, publishing house Hooded Horse has plenty of experience with reaching the right audience on Steam. Speaking via LinkedIn, Boss Tim Bender acknowledges that some developers and publishers will "worry that they can no longer book a set front-page spot," but states that he believes "what is gained is far, far more valuable."

"Instead of a single time of the year where a game is shown on the front page, now games will be eligible to be displayed constantly throughout the year. And instead of that visibility being relatively ill-tuned, now games will be shown at sensible frequencies to people who are actually potential buyers." Rather than repeatedly being shown offers you have little interest in, you should be suggested games that you might actually care about.

Bender expresses confidence in Steam's algorithm, referring to a recent post where he discussed how Valve's new experimental slots in the Discounts and Events grid has quickly become one of the best sources of traffic for some indies. "Converting the manually curated spots - the highest-visibility spots in that section - into algorithmic spots is going to make that already dramatic improvement for indie game discovery several times larger."

Steam gets rapidly busier by the day - in late August, ICO Partners noted that over 700 games had launched within a single week for the first time in the platform's history. Of that list, the vast majority got close to no attention. Any attempts to improve discovery of worthwhile places for our attention are certainly welcome. "Don't mourn the loss of weekend, midweek, and daily deals," Bender concludes, asserting: "This is a wonderful trade and a big win for both players and developers."