Valve Moves Steam Personal Calendar Out of Beta as Full Feature

Valve has moved the Personal Calendar out of Steam Labs and made it a permanent part of the Steam Store. “With today’s Steam update, the Personal Calendar feature officially graduates from Steam Labs and is considered a full feature of the Steam Store,” Valve said in its announcement. The tool began as a beta last year.

The calendar page shows the next eight weeks of upcoming games that Valve’s algorithms think a user may like. Users can set how many games appear in the calendar view, and they can filter by specific genre and theme tags to narrow the list further.

Recommendations are “based on games you play a lot,” according to Valve. The company says the system weighs playtime in the games you play most, so “a few minutes trying out a new game or two won’t have much impact on your recommendations, but sinking a bunch of time into a new favorite will.”

Valve also says the calendar carries no sponsored placements. To avoid trapping users in a “filter bubble” of the same kinds of games, the company points out that it is unlikely every day brings a new release that matches the genre or theme of what you already play and is also a good recommendation. That, Valve explains, keeps the mix of genres in the calendar more varied.

Why it matters

Steam sees a large number of new releases every day, and GamesRadar’s Dustin Bailey describes keeping track of the interesting ones as arguably the platform’s biggest problem. He calls the Personal Calendar the cleanest and most concise way he has found to check upcoming Steam releases, and says it filters out a lot of noise. He also notes he is often critical of Steam’s recommendation algorithms, which he says have done little to separate good new releases from the rest.

Graduating from Steam Labs means the calendar is no longer an experiment. It is now a standard part of the store rather than a beta that could change or disappear.

What we don’t know yet

The sources do not say how the calendar ranks games within its eight-week window, how many games users can display at once, or whether the feature will expand beyond its current form.