14 DAY TRIAL // The team at Valve in charge of the Steam digital distribution service says that the recent Discovery Queue feature has been a major boon for the all video games featured but has had a bigger than expected impact on indie titles, which are being noticed by a bigger number of gamers.
The company claims, according to official data shared on Reddit, that product page views have increased by 30 percent across the board and that 75% of them are coming from the new queue, and even Steam Tag use has increased lately.
Valve adds, "In addition to the raw increases in traffic, we’ve also carefully monitored sales data to make sure we’re growing the size of the pie, rather than just adjusting the size of the slices. Steam’s overall growth doesn’t just come from the biggest hits, but also from the smaller titles that are now better able to reach the audience that is right for them."
When games that are not in the top 500 selling titles on Steam are taken into account, the total revenue has increased by 18 percent and daily earnings are also higher than before.
Valve is also saying that it is working on updates to improve the way the Discovery Queue works in the coming weeks, which should again show an improvement for smaller titles.
Steam is dealing with problems linked to too much choice
The digital distribution service is at the moment a little too successful for its own good, and as more and more titles are being added by both small and big developers, it is getting harder for each individual game to get noticed by players.
The Discovery Queue is set to solve this issue and Valve is also offering personalized stores and other tools.
Valve needs to make sure that Steam remains the biggest digital distribution ecosystem on the PC, especially as it is preparing to launch the Steam Machines and its new controller later in the year.
The company is also working with HTC to create the Vive virtual reality headset, which is also expected to arrive in 2015, although no exact date has been revealed so far and no info has been offered on its price point or on the experiences that will be offered for it when it arrives.