Even Valve doesn’t expect Steam’s biggest surprise hits

pcgamesn.com:

Valve is just as surprised as you by those colossal Steam hits that seem to appear out of nowhere, as the company behind PC gaming’s biggest storefront releases a 25-minute video detailing just how it uses both player habits and bespoke curated segments to link you up with your next favorite game.

With so many games entering the best PC games list every year, it can be difficult to know what to play on Steam at any given moment. Steam sales can be a big help, but Valve has a very specific way of highlighting the games it thinks you like, and now we know a lot more about that process.

This comes from a brand-new Steamworks Development video hosted by Steam Business Team’s Erik Peterson, which details exactly how Valve uses a combination of player-focused algorithms and Steam-curated lists to present players with games they should end up liking.

In the video, called Steam Visibility: How Games Get Surfaced to Players, Peterson makes a point of how, like us, Valve is surprised when most games blow up on the platform. Recent Steam launches like Dave the Diver are a perfect example of this, and how Valve can’t predict when this is going to happen. We at PCGamesN have transcribed Peterson’s quote below.

“We’re surprised all the time by the games that find big success on Steam,” Peterson says. “Every week, Steam automatically picks up on games that we haven’t even heard of or games that we would have never predicted would be popular.

“Hit games are emerging organically, powered by what players are excited about. We think that when we get surprised by a game that’s good, it’s an indication that Steam is working properly.”

Going back to the scuba diving, sushi-making example the Dave the Diver player count absolutely soared