The Valve devs have made some important changes

Oct 29, 2014 16:11 GMT  ·  By

Valve has updated the SteamOS Linux distribution and the standalone Steam client with a very important feature that would help users find games that are suited to their particular setup much more easily.

If you are using the Steam client on your desktop, it's pretty easy to determine exactly which game you want and what the best one for your platform is, but the same kind of functionality is not easily available in the Big Picture mode or on SteamOS, which uses the same interface. Figuring out what games are right for you, especially to purchase, is not an easy task.

Valve usually pays close attention to the community and the devs are usually quick to respond to any grievances. The Big Picture mode for Steam is becoming increasingly popular, which is a good thing for Valve, but at the same time, more users now notice that certain features are missing and that the interface is far from being a complete one.

Gamers can now see what titles are right for them

You might think that it's easy for Valve to determine what suggestions to provide to users or to say which information is actually useful, but that is a lot harder than you think. There are numerous factors to take into consideration and they can't afford to make mistakes. Users pay for the games and the company doesn't want to be flooded with complaints from people who bought items that were not compatible.

"We've heard some feedback from users about shopping for and playing games on SteamOS. It can be tricky to determine which Steam games are best-suited to your setup, and the matrix of elements which contribute to this equation is ever-expanding. What OS am I running? What type of input am I using? Do I have an active In-Home Streaming connection?"

"Each of these details can be used to help guide you to the content that's most relevant to you right now. So we've updated the Big Picture Store and Library interfaces in our most recent SteamOS and Steam Client Betas to take advantage of this information. The system detects your current OS, input devices, and the OS of your remote Streaming host, if one exists, and it uses the information to dynamically present you with the content you want to see," Valve devs said in the announcement.

For now, the new features are available only in the Beta version of SteamOS and the Steam client. Users will need to opt in the Beta channel in order to benefit from these changes.