Valve have released a revamped Steam store menu in beta, so folks can give a number of changes a whirl and offer feedback ahead of the full rollout.
As the pipe-themed company wrote in a news post about the menu emerging from the labs for this testing, the main goal of its changes is to offer “easier access to the places Steam users most frequently visit”. Insert joke about the sorts of weird stuff one can have lurking in their Steam library here.
So, what sorts of tweaks are Valve giving a go? Well, the massive column of links that usually chills on the left side of your screen and the blue menu bar across the top have been smushed together into a single menu, with the aim of decluttering things by ensuring certain links won’t be on offer in two places on the same page.
Then, there’s the search bar, which I’m glad to report the Steamy engineers have made a lot larger than the previous version’s stubby little box below the button that takes you to your wishlist. You’ve now got a lot more space to click and write ‘Euro Truck Simulator 2 lorry dating sim’ as you attempt to will such a thing into existence, people calling card companies be damned.
Rather than just serving you options based on what you’re typing, the bar now immediately pops up a number of options when you first click into it, serving you a list of currently popular searches, games you’ve recently looked at, your top genres, and a button to take you straight to the advanced search function.
The rest of the revamped top bar includes a drop-down browse menu that can quickly take you to places like Steam’s top sellers, new releases and your wishlist (it even lets you know if any games on the latter are currently discounted). Next to that browse section is one for recommendations, designed to help you find “games based on your playtime, what you’ve purchased, or recommendations from people you trust” without having to root around on multiple screens.
Alongside those is a revamped categories tab that’s another way to get to your top genres and tags if you’re in search of a new way to do stuff you already like, or hunt for fresh stuff.
I’ve given this beta version a quick whirl. So far, I’d say it feels like a nice little improvement on the previous menu, and one that shouldn’t mess too much with my muscle memory. If you want to check it out for yourself, you can follow the instructionshere to opt into the beta, and then let Valve know what you think here once you’ve had a play around.
