In the new year, Valve will be rolling out a number of updates to its Steam PC Games store. First, Valve will be updating Steam's design to align with the Steam Chat redesign, which is underway through July, and will also bring new features like a flexible friends list and the ability to manage friends from games.
The remaining details are insufficient and we do not know for sure what the new recommendation engine will include to improve video game results for players according to their preferences. This new feature will definitely include purchase history but Valve stated that the recommendations will be based on machine-learning to make the algorithms more accurate. However, this does not mean that all recommendations will rely exclusively on the engines. Valve added that the algorithms constitute only a small part of future solutions and at this time more and more «broadcasting» and «curating» features are being built that fit the store's design.
Regarding Steam, it is expected to have a new events system that will suggest tournaments, streams and weekly challenges, as Steam TV expands, aiming to support all games. Additionally, there will be upgrades to the Steam Trust program, making fraud even more difficult for players. This technology was first used with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive but is now available for all video games.
Finally, it is worth noting that the company renewed its partnership with Perfect World to bring Steam to China. Although Valve decided not to censor controversial games in the West, some reports say that SteamChina will allow specific games to be released in the country after careful examination to confirm that there will be no censorship by the Chinese authorities.
