Valve announces updates to the Steam Workshop. The updates will make browsing easier and improve responsiveness on the Steam Deck and in Big Picture Mode.
The Steam Workshop is vital to the Steam Community. With thousands of games enabled for Workshop compatibility and over 50 million items uploaded, it’s a powerful Community for players to share mods with one another. However, Valve felt it was time to streamline the user browsing experience.
Valve Touts New Steam Workshop Updates
On April 7, Valve announced a new beta update for the workshop that makes it easier to view. The update is available as an opt-in offer. As for what’s new, the changes range from simple updates, such as making the browsing page wider and allowing for more items and bigger preview images on each page, to smarter filtering options.
“Filters can now be configured by game developers to apply (and appear) for certain types of items. For Workshops that contain both Maps and Items, developers can define which types each filter should apply to,” Valve notes. Also, changes are applied more quickly when filtering or changing sorting options.
As mentioned above, the updates to the browsing experience improve responsiveness on mobile, Steam Deck, and Big Picture mode. Lastly, there’s a new quick view option. Players can access that by clicking a magnifying glass in the corner of each item. This will allow you to preview items, favorite them, subscribe to creators, or vote on items without leaving the browsing experience.
Valve Wanted These Changes for Quite Some Time
These changes to the browsing experience are at the top of the list of improvements they wanted to make.
“Millions of users browse the Steam Workshop every month, and there are dozens of ways to interact with the user interface while doing it. Unfortunately, most interactions with the page required a full page reload, which significantly slowed down the browsing process.”
This update is expected to remain in beta for several weeks or months. During that time, Valve will use user feedback to continue to improve the experience.
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