Weekly News: Recommended For You and What We're Playing

[steam_news]

By now we’re all used to having computers tell us what they think we’ll like. If you’re like us, some internet-retail superbrain has decided that you’re very interested in anything to do with weed killer, because you once accidentally looked at a product page or advertisement for Weed Killer Plus. Well, this week we’ve made the Steam backend brains smarter about how they compute recommendations, by having them factor in things like which games you actually play (as opposed to just what you own, or what you’ve looked at). The results are good, but ultimately we think that any such system can only go so far. Because, really, even if the computer gets it right, it’s still just a computer.

So we’re harnessing a force much more powerful: your friends. THEY are Steam’s new recommendation engine. Oh, and so are you.

Steam now lets you share your opinions directly with each other. Tell all your friends why they should really try Call of Duty: Black Ops. Tell Uncle “Goose” why, for the sake of his mental health, he should probably spend a day in The Undergarden. Or, check out their recommendations for you – they know you better than you think. And if your friends haven’t written any recommendations yet, Steam will still suggest games for you based on what they’ve been playing lately. We built it because... we think it just makes sense. Try it out and let us know what you think.

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Meanwhile, the Steam Publishing Team has been playing BIT.TRIP BEAT, where the team was vying for top spot on the friends leaderboards until William went ahead and set a seemingly unachievable score. The team has agreed that from now on, they'll conveniently 'forget' to include William the next time they challenge the group to a leaderboard competition.

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