Steam's customizable News Hub gets a big update ahead of full launch
The changes eliminate a lot of clutter and put added emphasis on upcoming events.
The customizable News Hub added to Steam in March has been expanded ahead of its full rollout, with layout changes, updated hubs for individual games, a dedicated section for upcoming events, and the addition of a new "Featured" section that, for now, includes posts from the top 100 best-selling games on Steam.
The most visible changes are in the menu bar on the left, previously "a long list of checkboxes," which now focuses on preset views for personalized news, upcoming events, and featured news from top sellers. There's also an option to search for specific games, and to select what sort of news you'll see—events, livestreams, content updates, that sort of thing—and from what sources.
The section dedicated to upcoming events has been added to make it easier to stay on top of things that are going to happen, rather than just things that have already happened, but some upcoming events will continue to appear in the default feed as well. The featured section will also continue to be tweaked, Valve said, "to include popular events from a broader variety of games as well as hand-picked events that our curation team here at Valve selects to highlight."
The overall layout of the News Hub has also been changed to be more accessible, and now includes links to each game's store and community page. "This also cleans up the individual news items in this view so you don't have to see the game name listed again on every single post," Valve said.
Valve hasn't said when the News Hub will exit the Steam Labs and be fully integrated as a Steam feature, but it looks pretty well finished to me so I'd expect something to happen soon. Then again, we all know how much Valve loves to fiddle with things, so who knows? In the meantime, you can take it for a test drive yourself at steampowered.com.