Steam's personalized News Hub has officially arrived

[midian182]

In a nutshell: Most Steam users have a vast library of games, the sheer volume of which can make catching all the related news and patch notes difficult. But a feature that has been in the experimental stage since March should make things a lot easier: the personalized news hub.

The News Hub became the ninth official Steam Labs feature earlier this year. Now, it’s been released in full—access it by selecting “News” from the “Store” drop-down menu. This updated news feed doesn’t show the same information to everyone; instead, it offers posts from the games you play, wishlist, follow, or are recommended.

In addition to less-important info such as patch notes, the News Hub shows major updates, sales, live streams, and tournament announcements. You can also see the latest news, including YouTube videos, about your games from gaming websites using the Steam Curator system.

“The News Hub also makes it easy to explore events coming up and lets you sign up for email or mobile app reminders. Or you can just add the event to your Google Calendar or iCal so you can plan your weekend around interesting tournaments or community events,” explains Valve.

If the prospect of being overwhelmed with posts related to games you never play doesn’t sound appealing, Valve is letting users tailor the feature via filters. These let you select the type of posts and sources you see, along with the option to stop viewing content from followed curators and select new curators to follow from a list.

The News Hub also contains a “featured” section that contains major updates, live events, and news from the top-selling and most-played games on Steam.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/87973-steam-personalized-news-hub-has-officially-arrived.html

 

[Neatfeatguy]

Valve's forced UI update October of 2019 has been a steaming pile of crap and still is to this day for many people.

They need to stop trying to update, update, update and fix the crap that's broken. We already have a company we have to deal with that constantly wants to just update, update, update instead of fixing issues.....that would be Microsoft.

I stopped using Steam a year ago because the UI is so bad that it crashes, chugs along, eats up resources and forces a social media wannabe website crap in your face constantly with the What's New shelf or constantly linking streaming of games and other worthless crap that shows up in your library.

Valve needs to bring back a basic library function that was simple, easy to navigate and doesn't hurt your eyes trying to look over all the crap that they shove in your face and I'll come back to Steam. Right now, GoG offers everything I need without forcing me to feel like I'm being swarmed with social media crap, shove it in your face! My brother still utilizes Steam, but on a very reduced level. He said he's still having issues with the UI: Steam going black, crashing, games not launching when he clicks on PLAY, hogging resources.....what a cluster****.

GoG Galaxy works without hogging resources, doesn't chug along and can be ran or not ran to launch games.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

My problem with STEAM is having to do mental gymnastics just to locate new games, and remembering to move between MY Library and MY wishlist.

Other than that, I'm fine with it and I don't use most of its features.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Valve's forced UI update October of 2019 has been a steaming pile of crap and still is to this day for many people.

They need to stop trying to update, update, update and fix the crap that's broken. We already have a company we have to deal with that constantly wants to just update, update, update instead of fixing issues.....that would be Microsoft.

I stopped using Steam a year ago because the UI is so bad that it crashes, chugs along, eats up resources and forces a social media wannabe website crap in your face constantly with the What's New shelf or constantly linking streaming of games and other worthless crap that shows up in your library.

Valve needs to bring back a basic library function that was simple, easy to navigate and doesn't hurt your eyes trying to look over all the crap that they shove in your face and I'll come back to Steam. Right now, GoG offers everything I need without forcing me to feel like I'm being swarmed with social media crap, shove it in your face! My brother still utilizes Steam, but on a very reduced level. He said he's still having issues with the UI: Steam going black, crashing, games not launching when he clicks on PLAY, hogging resources.....what a cluster****.

GoG Galaxy works without hogging resources, doesn't chug along and can be ran or not ran to launch games.

If you have that many issues might be time to do driver updates. None of my machines have these issues, and some are quite old by tech standards.

And really, GOG? You think that Galaxy is superior to steam?

 

[Neatfeatguy]

If you have that many issues might be time to do driver updates. None of my machines have these issues, and some are quite old by tech standards.

And really, GOG? You think that Galaxy is superior to steam?

GoG is leaps and bounds better over Steam now that Valve broke the hell out of the Steam UI.

Across 4 different computers, utilizing different hardware and even different OSes I run into all these issues: Steam crashing to desktop, UI screen going black, hogging multiple GBs of RAM, hitching when scrolling, images not populating for games on shelves, Play button not working, games crashing upon starting.

* Uplay - no issues, it's a bit sluggish in comparison to how Steam used to be, but I haven't had any issues with it. Games launch, Uplay doesn't crash and so on.
* GoG Galaxey - no issues. I can scroll through my menu of available games with zero hitching, doesn't eat up resources, doesn't crash/hang/black screen on the UI. And to top it off, I don't even need Galaxy to run games downloaded and installed from GoG.
* Origin - no issues from the limited use I make of it. Games launch, no crashes, everything is functional...I just don't think Origin is laid out well.
* EGS - I don't use it, but my brother does. He hasn't had any issues with it, like the problems he has with Steam. He'd rather deal with EGS over Steam these days.
* Old Steam UI - zero issues, no hitching, no crashing, games launched and it was snappy.

Steam has issues that are not resolved, even after 14 months of pushing out the new UI. Not everyone experiences problems and those that do, the issues happen across a wide range of hardware and software: computers that are 8+ years old to high-end PCs.

Glad you're not having issues, but others are.

 

[QuaZulu]

As one for whom Steam works perfectly across different computers and accounts, I'm happy for this news. Maybe I've just gotten used to the "granddad," but it seems to work more intuitively than the other platforms (which I have mostly because of exclusive offerings). I also rock GOG Galaxy because I like their modus.

 

[Bamda]

Valve's forced UI update October of 2019 has been a steaming pile of crap and still is to this day for many people.

They need to stop trying to update, update, update and fix the crap that's broken. We already have a company we have to deal with that constantly wants to just update, update, update instead of fixing issues.....that would be Microsoft.

I stopped using Steam a year ago because the UI is so bad that it crashes, chugs along, eats up resources and forces a social media wannabe website crap in your face constantly with the What's New shelf or constantly linking streaming of games and other worthless crap that shows up in your library.

Valve needs to bring back a basic library function that was simple, easy to navigate and doesn't hurt your eyes trying to look over all the crap that they shove in your face and I'll come back to Steam. Right now, GoG offers everything I need without forcing me to feel like I'm being swarmed with social media crap, shove it in your face! My brother still utilizes Steam, but on a very reduced level. He said he's still having issues with the UI: Steam going black, crashing, games not launching when he clicks on PLAY, hogging resources.....what a cluster****.

GoG Galaxy works without hogging resources, doesn't chug along and can be ran or not ran to launch games.

That is complete BS! I love GOG but their 2.0 Beta launcher is crap, its very very very buggy! Steam on the other hand works extremely well. Its not perfect but its light years ahead of where GOG is. I am not saying that you are not having issues with Steam but your claims are just your own, as a long time user of the platform I have experienced issues but no different then all the other game launchers out there.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

That is complete BS! I love GOG but their 2.0 Beta launcher is crap, its very very very buggy! Steam on the other hand works extremely well. Its not perfect but its light years ahead of where GOG is. I am not saying that you are not having issues with Steam but your claims are just your own, as a long time user of the platform I have experienced issues but no different then all the other game launchers out there.

I'd say that Steam is ahead of Galaxy platform, if you're looking for a bloated social media UI of a gaming platform. Steam lost its simplistic, easy to use library that had nearly no issues to it's extremely bloated (poorly coded use of Chromium) and broken UI.

The two best things about GoG that Valve ditched or outright refuses to do:
1) Simplicity. Click on game in your library, click on play. No streaming videos, what's new or other social media garbage in the way. It works for me. This no longer works on Steam for me without headaches, bugs, crashes....
2) I can play any game without the digital platform. In fact, in no way whatsoever do you even need to utilize it. You can download right from gog.com, install the game wherever you want on your computer and play without a digital platform.

If you enjoy Steam, by all means, use it. But it's still broken for many people and they have yet to fix it. They keep adding more and more to it without fixing the simple things that make it a useful platform for everyone.

 

[Draconian]

Looks very similar to the "Activity" tab, just without people commenting on the news and no updates about what your friends are doing on Steam.