Steam's big changes: New & Trending, cross-promo & more...

Also: the week's top Steam games, and lots of links for you.

[The GameDiscoverCo game discovery newsletter is written by ‘how people find your game’ expert & company founder Simon Carless, and is a regular look at how people discover and buy video games in the 2020s.]

So we just hit a big milestone for the GameDiscoverCo newsletter. We’ve been publishing it for 5 years (!). And in lieu of candles, we’re switching things up and streamlining our output. Here’s how:

• We’ve been publishing multiple free game discovery newsletters every week, and one 'paid subscriber-specific newsletter every Friday. That’s… a lot sometimes.

• There’s a kernel of the Friday newsletter that works - the ‘this week on Steam’ analysis. But the rest can be a bit, uhh, niche. (Apple Arcade charts, f’example.)

• So we’re simplifying things, and changing to two newsletters per week: one free, and one paid. Each will have a lead story, some extra analysis, and a big, handy ‘latest news’ links section.

This is our first paid newsletter where a free excerpt is going out to everyone. So you’ll see it hit a paywall shortly (if you’re not a Plus sub.) If you’re not, consider upgrading your subscription to support GameDiscoverCo, and read the rest - easy as that.

[We’ve even set up a 25% off discount - our first in 10 months - for a limited time, to make the move simpler for you. It’s $12/month if you sign up for a year. And don’t forget all the extra stuff you get, like crazy useful Steam data access, Discord, eBooks, all that goodness…]

Steam’s big new changes: New & Trending, cross-promo & more

There’s been what can only be called a ‘flurry of activity’ on the platform side from Steam over the past couple of days. The speed even surprised us. It’s divided into three parts. But let’s start with the first, which is notable, but not formally announced.