The Times They Are A-Changin': How Valve is trying to update Steam for the modern games industry

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Over the last few years, the perception around Steam has changed somewhat. Valve's storefront has gone from being the biggest name in PC gaming to having a more problematic relationship with both the development community and players.

Creators have found that due to the sheer number of releases coming to the platform - especially following Steam Direct's 2017 rollout - it's far harder to actually be seen and go on to have success on the storefront. At the end of 2018, as criticism against Steam grew and grew, Fortnite maker Epic Games launched its own store, offering a more competitive revenue share - 88:12 versus Steam's 70:30 - with many seeing this as some real competition to Valve finally emerging. The company hasn't stopped trying to improve Steam though, with a bevvy of new features coming to the platform in the near future. 

We caught up with Steam designer Alden Kroll to see how Valve is trying to change the platform to make it a better place for both developers and consumers

So, it seems like it's been an interesting year for Steam. Lots of new things happening in the store space, new competition...

Historically, there's always been a lot of change. I feel like that over the year, there's been a lot of interesting things happening in PC gaming and gaming in general. The last year has had quite a few developments and changes. That seems with on par with how things have been. That's not to say we are always doing things exactly the same as we're always paying attention and figuring out what unique niche does Steam serve and how do we best make players happy and help developers reach their market.

The narrative over the last eight or nine months in the games industry is that Valve is under pressure now to improve Steam after a massive company like Epic has entered the store space. How do you view this competition? 

You can look at competition in some many different ways. Steam isn't just competing against Epic or Microsoft or Sony - we're competing