The founder of the analytics service GameDiscoverCo, Simon Carless, noticed the change.
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As noted by the analyst, the "Discounts & Events" section on the Steam homepage has recently become more personalized. It now better considers the interests of store users and often recommends purchasing not just another bestseller, but something less known, yet more aligned with specific gamers' tastes. According to Carless, this could potentially boost sales of indie games.
The analyst's observations were also confirmed by the CEO of the publisher Hooded Horse, Tim Bender. He wrote on LinkedIn that he too started seeing more small games, with under a thousand reviews, in this section.
Additionally, the head of Hooded Horse decided to gather statistics and check if the innovation affected games' traffic. As it turned out, yes. Bender gave an example of an unnamed indie game whose visits from the "Discounts & Events" section sharply increased: in the last month, gamers navigated to its page 7,341 times, while over the previous five months, it could only boast of 14 such visits. In fact, Bender noted, this section has now become its primary source of traffic on Steam. The situation was similar with other small and medium-sized games he studied — for medium-sized games, the increase in transitions was not as dramatic but still noticeable.
"Thus, everyone benefits: gamers now receive more relevant recommendations, and publishers and developers can showcase games to a more suitable audience. But it significantly changes the situation for small indie developers, whose games previously did not make it into this section at all," Bender concluded.
Valve itself has not commented on the innovation, but it aligns well with its direction. Recall, in June, the company significantly revamped Steam's homepage, including adding a personal user calendar and increasing the volume of recommended games.