Valve turns your Steam play history into a game release roadmap

Valve is expanding Steam with a new store feature designed to make it easier to discover new releases and upcoming games. Launching first as 'Steam Labs Experiment 16,' Personal Calendar is designed to show you recently released and upcoming games, "filtered down to the set of games we think you are most likely to be interested in."

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Presented in a date or calendar format, as shown in the screenshot above, it serves as a daily planner or calendar of games to check out, wishlist, and purchase. "This new calendar finds people with similar playtime profiles to you, and then looks at the games those players have been adding to their wishlist," Valve explains.

It works like existing recommendations in Steam, but focuses on using the games you spend the most time playing as the basis for filling out your Personal Calendar. Valve notes that a "few minutes trying out a couple of new games or demos won't have much impact on your recommendations, but sinking a bunch of time into a new favorite will."

Valve adds that the recommendation system gets re-trained daily, which, although is an AI term, there's no mention of the use of AI at all in the announcement. Even though the calendar displays recent releases alongside new games set to debut in the next eight weeks, you will notice new things appear over time as you continue playing games on the platform.

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Now, for those thinking that this is simply a different way of showing you recommendations, that's also true. Your Steam Personal Calendar is all about presenting this information in a specific way.

"We've been drawn to the idea of having a visual representation of upcoming releases in calendar form to help understand how far away an exciting new launch is," Valve writes. "So this new calendar view takes the list of soon-to-release titles, filters them down to the set that we recommend most for you, and maps them out across time for you to see at a glance."

Another great feature of personalized calendars is that they will also display games in your wishlist, making it a great tool to keep track of those. There are also customization controls to list games and genres not present in your personalized list, as well as the number of games to display. As a Steam Labs experiment, Valve is looking for feedback on the new feature, which you can do so via the Steam Labs discussion boards.