Steam Improvements

by Seyon, in Games: Steam (1 Comment)

Valve has been busy working on many updates for Steam recently. Read the online gaming sites and you will find about a new one every month. Here are some that we have heard about so far:

Steamworks – A collection of tools for developers and publishers of all sizes. These tools are the same ones used for Valve’s own games like Team Fortress 2 and Day of Defeat: Source. They also provide functions for encryption, anti-piracy, real-time stats, territory control, voice chat, auto updates and achievements, along with developer tools for quality assurance.

Steam Cloud – This gives Steam users a way to keep save files and configuration files indefinitely. These files would be stored remotely and would put an end to losing save files that you forgot to backup.

P2P Network –  A peer to peer network was mentioned before Steam was even released, but is still being looked at as it was mentioned in a fairly recent interview with Gabe.

Matchmaking – It’s what it sounds like. Give the user the ability to play with similar skilled people on your favorite games. Or even search for friends or clan members looking to play the same game.

Minimum System Requirements – Steam will run a scan on your PC and determine if you can play a certain game. It will go as far as to even recommend  upgrades.

System Driver Downloads – This would include non-game drivers. Steam currently does check video drivers but will not download and update the driver as is planned in part of this.

Supposedly half of the people that work at Valve are working on Steam. They are really pushing to make this the PC gaming platform. After all, who really is going to compete with them? I don’t think the horribly named “Games for Windows – Live” has even a chance.

But with that said, Steam is far from perfect. Some things work well but could be better. Here are some of the improvements that I would like to see in Steam.

Expanded Game Browser – The game browser, as it is, worked well when the Steam catalog could be counted on finger and toes. Now, the size has grown immensely as more developers and publishers jump aboard. The current setup of My Favorites, Installed and Uninstalled just doesn’t cut it anymore. We need new sort options and the ability to add new columns; being able to sort by publisher, developer, date of release, genre and multiplayer support would be a great help. There are times when even that would not be enough though. So give us the ability to add tags to games. This will allow us to categorize and sort by any number of combinations.

Shopping Cart – This one sounds simple but is really needed. Two weeks ago when I bought a game through Steam, I was still only able to buy one game at a time. This will really curb impulse buying so it is truly against their best interests not to do this.

File Transfer – This may fall under the P2P they are looking at, but as the number of IM programs increases, you end up wanting just one that does it all; file transfers being one of the only reasons I still have XFire installed.

So, what do you think Steam needs added or changed? Drop a note in the comments and let us know.