Steam’s Personal Calendar is officially finished. Valve has moved the game discovery tool out of its Steam Labs testing hub and made it available to everyone, PCGamesN reports, with a promise that no one can pay their way onto it.
The calendar is built to fill a gap in Steam’s recommendations. Valve says some parts of the front page lean toward popular games, while others show games similar to what you play regardless of release date. The Personal Calendar aims to sit in between, surfacing “popular and niche games that may be of interest and are new or soon to release.”
Recommendations are based mainly on your playtime with the games you play most. “A few minutes trying out a new game or two won’t have much impact on your recommendations,” Valve says, “but sinking a bunch of time into a new favorite will.” The algorithm is tuned daily, though Valve notes your picks probably won’t change much from one day to the next. Further out on the calendar, upcoming games slot in as their release dates are confirmed.
Valve is also trying to head off the obvious worry that a tool built around your habits will just show you more of the same. “We’re also concerned about the potential for getting stuck in a filter bubble, so we work hard on keeping things varied,” the company says. Because there is rarely a strong match in your favorite genre launching every single day, the calendar ends up drawing from a wider pool of releases.
Every pick comes from the algorithm, with no manual curation. “We don’t sell placement on the Steam Personal Calendar, or anywhere else on Steam,” Valve says. The company adds that building the calendar led to other changes, including letting developers list the date their game will leave early access as version 1.0.
A small version shows up on the Steam front page, and the “explore more” button opens the full calendar. There you can filter by tags, show or hide wishlisted games, and turn off games you already own or titles in early access, as TheGamer also details. It is the latest in a run of Steam quality-of-life features, following achievement sets that protect your 100% completion.
