Steam Labs offers new ways to search, teases a 'Deep Dive' recommender

(Image credit: Valve)

Ahead of the launch of Steam's new library design, Steam Labs has been updated with a new experiment, a tweak to an existing one, and an announcement of another forthcoming experiment. 

First of all there's "Experiment 004", a new way to search Steam with a lot more filters. It includes a price slider, options to hide games you own or have wishlisted or that aren't on sale, and more. This new version of search has infinite scrolling as well.

The tweak is an update to the micro trailers of Experiment 001, which create six-second versions of trailers for the time-poor. Now every single game on Steam has one, and they can be browsed by tag here. An entire page of flickering images demanding your attention.

The next Steam Labs experiment will be "Deep Dive", based on the Steam Diving Bell by Lars Doucet, and created in collaboration with him. Diving Bell is a recommender, but unlike the kind that examine your preferences and figure out what to suggest based on that (as the existing Steam Labs Recommender does), this one works by taking a game you suggest to it and then bringing up more things like it. Doucet compares it to a Wikipedia binge, the idea that once you have a topic you're interested in what you want are similar, related topics to explore.

The Deep Dive experiment isn't active yet, but you can mess around with the others over at the Steam Labs page. The updated library will release on September 17 if you've opted into the beta client.

TOPICS
Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.

Latest in Platforms
A screenshot from game Mudborne of a little humanoid frog in a marsh
Five new Steam games you probably missed (March 24, 2025)
midnight murder club
Five new Steam games you probably missed (March 17, 2025)
Screenshot of Children of Clay showing a mysterious clay model
Five new Steam games you probably missed (March 10, 2025)
discord
Brace yourself for Discord to get worse: Reports swirl that the company is in talks with bankers about opening itself up to shareholders
The Spy from Team Fortress 2 holds up a folder with an accusatory expression.
Steam users react ecstatically to update that lets them access their heaving game notes via the web, also it fixes Monster Hunter Wilds video recording
HasanAbi
Twitch streamer Hasan Piker suspended after saying Republicans would 'kill Rick Scott' if they really cared about Medicare fraud
Latest in News
Assassin's Creed Shadows promo image
Ubisoft scores a legendary ratio against Elon Musk on his own platform—which hopefully marks a final end to all the Assassin's Creed Shadows' culture war nonsense
Tzarina Katarin Bokha, the Ice Queen of Kislev
Total War: Warhammer 3 rolls out a cool Kislev overhaul, changes befitting Tzeench’s magic, new projectile units and creakier skeletal horses
An image of a golden first place award from Geoguessr
'We're actually getting GeoGuessr on Steam before GTA 6': the Google Street View puzzler arrives on Valve's platform this April
Napster client circa 1999
Former music-pirating platform Napster to be reborn rather ironically as a metaverse for musicians to connect with their fans after $207 million deal
The snazzy red and black HyperX Cloud Alpha wireless headphones float in a teal void. The microphone is attached to the headset.
The best wireless gaming headset is now even better in the Amazon Big Spring Sale, boasting a more than $50 discount
A chip being held up in an Intel fab
Intel is reportedly 'working to finalize commitments from Nvidia' as a foundry partner, suggesting gaming potential for the 18A node