The Winter Sale has begun, with deep discounts on thousands of games! But as always that’s not all there is to the event. The Steam Awards nominees have been chosen, there are holiday gifts to pick up, and both Steam Points and Steam Chat have been updated with new features and content.




This year we’ve teamed up with artist Eric Nyffeler, to help us create the Winter Sale theme, the Seasonal Profile, and... bird stickers!? Why birds, you ask? To that we ask you - why NOT birds? Claim a free animated bird sticker (each inspired by a popular game on Steam) every other day of the sale when you visit the Points Shop, where you'll find other new winter seasonal items.




Thanks to your tens of millions of nominations (a record!) during the Autumn Sale, we have our final nominees for the 2020 Steam Awards. Over forty titles are up for awards across ten categories, and the winners will be chosen by you, the Steam community. Make sure to visit the Steam Awards page to cast your vote before January 3rd, when we will be announcing the winners!




New Profile Showcases and Upgrades
Don’t have enough room to display all your rare achievements or badges? Now you can upgrade your showcases, giving you more room to display your swag. Still not enough room? You can also get additional showcases for your profile, all for Steam Points. Check them out now in the Steam Points Shop. We've also added new showcases to choose from. You can now add the Community Awards, Game Completionist, Featured Artwork, and Video showcases to your Steam Profile.

Profile and Discussion Awards
We’ve seen how Steam players have loved awarding reviews and workshop content, so the team has decided to expand this further. Starting today, you can grant community awards to Steam Profiles and Discussion Board posts as well. Learn more here.

New Community Awards
There are now even more places to award content, so it would be a shame if there weren't more awards to choose from. The team has nearly doubled the number of available community awards with this update - this includes the Clever, Wholesome, Wild, and Saucy awards, just to name a few.




Steam Chat has gotten an upgrade as well with today's update - Chat Reactions. You can now react to messages within Steam Chat using your emoticons or animated stickers. Reactions appear in-line below the message, and other players can +1 your reaction or add reactions of their own. This update applies to desktop, web, and mobile versions of Steam Chat.


Enjoy the sale, and stay tuned for announcements about the best games of 2020 and the winners of the Steam Awards!

Continuing our monthly series, we're happy to announce the Top Releases of November. As a reminder, we showcase the Top 20 titles released during the month, measured by the revenue generated during the first two weeks after release. We also highlight the Top 5 free-to-play titles, based on number of unique players they acquired.


Players have always appreciated how games allow them to see worlds they may not otherwise be able to. November demonstrated that theme in a fun way, with many players opting for the experiences that come with real-life careers. Whether it's the excitement of blazing danger in Firefighting Simulator, the feeling of worldwide musical fame in FUSER™, the challenge of attaining perfection in Football Manager 2021, or even the appetite for exploration in Mars Horizon, these games give players a taste of what these careers entail - now only if they came with the paycheck, too! Make sure to check future months to see if your job ends up becoming a Top Release.


We're also happy to see four new Early Access debuts in November, each well on their way to creating collaborative and invested communities. Prodeus and Due Process are bringing new and exciting elements to the FPS genre, while Door Kickers 2 and Kingdoms Reborn give players two completely unique simulation experiences that are worth checking out. We're looking forward to watching these games and their communities grow as they progress through Early Access.


About half of the games this month are coming from teams who are releasing a product on Steam for the very first time. Some of these teams have worked on games before, while others are completely new to development. A big welcome and congratulations to Bounding Box Software Inc., Chris Shanaz, Chronos Unterhaltungssoftware, Damian Schloter, Earthshine, Giant Enemy Crab, GSQ Games, Pillow Castle, Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, Stellar Entertainment Limited, Vadim Slyusarev, and YS Net.

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Here's the list of November's top releases ordered by release date (we've organized this list on a handy sale page too):


Kingdoms Reborn
Earthshine (Thailand)


Door Kickers 2: Task Force North
KillHouse Games (Romania)


Due Process
Giant Enemy Crab (USA)


SpellForce 3: Fallen God
Grimlore Games (Germany)


Apex Legends™
Respawn Entertainment (USA)


DIRT 5
Codemasters (UK)


Need for Speed™ Hot Pursuit Remastered
Stellar Entertainment Limited (UK)


Superliminal
Pillow Castle (USA)


Prodeus
Bounding Box Software Inc. (USA)


FUSER™
Harmonix Music Systems, Inc (USA)


Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin
Edelweiss (Japan)


Yakuza: Like a Dragon
Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio (Japan)


Titanfall™
Respawn Entertainment (USA)


Firefighting Simulator - The Squad
Chronos Unterhaltungssoftware (Germany)


Mars Horizon
Auroch Digital (UK)


Shenmue III
YS Net (Japan)


Slasher's Keep
Damian Schloter (Germany)


Football Manager 2021
Sports Interactive (UK)


Amazing Cultivation Simulator
GSQ Games (China)


NEKOPARA Vol. 4
NEKO WORKs (Japan)

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And here are the Top 5 free-to-play titles from November, ranked by total unique player count:


Apex Legends™
Respawn Entertainment (USA)


Super Buckyball Tournament Preseason
Pathea Games (China)


*NEW* SCUFFED EPIC BHOP SIMULATOR 2023 (POG CHAMP)
Chris Shanaz (Australia)


Our Life: Beginnings & Always
GB Patch Games (USA)


Disc Space
Vadim Slyusarev (UK)

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If you're curious about previous months, here are more Top Release lists:

• May 2020
  
• June 2020
  
• July 2020
  
• August 2020
  
• September 2020
  
• October 2020

Library

• Added a new game properties dialog, which replaces the old dialog for all Steam games.
  
• Fixed displaying the coming soon date for a pre-loaded game

Steam Input

• Added support for software calibration of the PS5 controller gyro
  
• Fix issue with Dpad emulation in games using the joyGetPosEx Windows API, ex: Shiren the Wanderer
  
• Fix Nintendo Switch origins in Steam Input API not reflecting the current Nintendo/Xbox layout setting

Steam Cloud

• Fixed an issue causing files to swap between users under separate Windows user IDs, and also with some file stored in paths with embedded 64-bit SteamIDs

SteamNetworkingSockets

• P2P connections now may attempt to negotiate a direct connection (punch NAT), if needed, to prevent connections from having very high latency. Added an option in the In-Game settings panel to control when your IP address is shared.

Server Browser

• Fix bug causing LAN server browser search to not show any servers

Linux

• Improved performance of processing incremental Vulkan shader database updates
  
• Fixed several issues around skipped Vulkan shader processing continuing in the background after a game has started
  
• Disabled shader processing on NVIDIA while driver issues are being looked into
  
• Fixed long delay in UI response when hot-plugging a controller

macOS

• Disabled “Enable GPU accelerated rendering in web views” and “Enable hardware video decoding” settings on Apple M1 devices due to poor HW-accelerated performance currently through Rosetta.