Steam rolls out Personal Calendar feature that constantly updates recommended games

You can try out the new feature on the Steam store’s homepage.

Personal Calendar is now available on Steam, offering a new way for gamers to stay on top of recently-released games that match their preferences. Valve released the new feature on Friday as a way to "fill a gap in between" those searching for trending or niche games and those who want recommendations based on their gaming tastes.

Valve said Personal Calendar bases its suggested games by comparing a user's recently-played titles with others who have similar gaming profiles and looking at their logged hours and wishlists. Valve clarified that users trying a new game out for a few minutes won't alter their algorithm too much, since it mostly factors in the games you spent a lot of time on.

The Personal Calendar will be refreshed daily since Valve explained that its user-specific algorithms will be re-trained regularly to include the latest available data. However, this won't lead to many day-to-day changes and users are more likely see new suggestions over the course of an eight-week window or as developers confirm release dates of their upcoming games.

Valve said the the Personal Calendar feature saw several months of testing and feedback within Steam Labs, its program for testing experimental changes to store and discovery features. Since then, Valve said that players click on more than 2,000 different games within Personal Calendar during an average 24-hour period.

The Personal Calendar features is part of Valve's latest efforts to address player feedback that the Steam store is too cluttered or hard to navigate. Before this release, Steam launched a new storefront earlier this year with a search menu and the introduction of "Categories" to help players find new games easier.

Source: Engadget