With Steam Labs Experiment 10 last December, we introduced dozens of new genres, categories, and tags to our store’s navigation. Today we're launching Experiment 13, where we’ve revamped these destinations, or store hubs, with powerful new tools for browsing, filtering, and exploring deeper into each category.

When you join the experiment from the Steam Labs page, you will find that every category and tag page on the store has been updated, introducing these new layouts and features to hundreds of niche destinations throughout. You'll encounter these pages by exploring the "Categories" drop-down in the store menu, or by clicking on tags from a game's store page.


The most notable feature of the new hubs is the carousel of featured games right at the top of the page. Much like our previous design, this area features new, top-selling, and discounted titles through the lens of our recommendations system which takes into account the games you’ve played, your friends' recommendations, and the curators and developers you follow. The new carousel features more metadata about each game, including tags, release date, and review score, plus a large presentation of the game’s micro trailer, a feature which you may remember from Steam Labs Experiment 1.



Keep up to date on the latest news, updates, and events happening in games across Steam, niche by niche. Within each hub, you'll find a section featuring in-game events, recent updates, and news posts from the developers of games you play, those you wish for, or those which are recommended for you.



Our tag-driven recommendations are also listed for you on the new hubs, making it easy to discover titles tagged similarly to the games you've been enjoying.

Relevant items you've added to your Wishlist are now conveniently displayed on every Store Hub.

Our new content hub design features powerful new filtering tools which we first introduced with Steam Labs Experiment 12. This new section allows you to sort by new and trending, top selling, top rated, or discount amount. And you can filter by features, tags, or your own shopping preferences like language support or whether to hide some of the games you've already discovered.


To join this experiment and try the new Store Hubs, just visit the Steam Labs page and click on "Join The Store Hubs Experiment" for Experiment 13. It will redirect you to one of the updated hubs so you can start exploring right away.

Join the Experiment

Once you've joined the experiment, you can find just the thing you're looking for, such as upcoming co-op survival games, the new and trending atmospheric, story-rich, open world games, the top-rated roguelike space games, current deals on third-person, single player action games, or whatever your thing might be.

You can also check out an example of the themes these new hubs enable. Our Space Hub demonstrates this theming in action.

Have a feature request in the new hubs? Spot a bug? Want to express your thoughts? Join us in the discussion forums. We'd love to hear what you think.

Library

• Fixed game images being truncated by a couple of pixels in shelves and collections

Steam Cloud

• Fixed issues related to switching between two apps that use shared cloud storage, such as Terraria and tModLoader
  
• Fixed issues with library storage of collections and shelves caused by frequent deletion and regeneration of collections and shelves
  
• Avoid overly-aggressive reconnection attempts after server resets

Steam Overlay

• Fixed Steam Overlay not rendering for some DirectX 12 games.

Steam Input

• Fixed "Controller Configuration" not showing up in the Manage Game context menu
  
• Fixed Unity games not seeing controllers at startup

Remote Play

• Greatly improved VAAPI hardware decoding on Linux
  
• Fixed touch control settings not being saved in the Steam Link app

Shader Pre-Caching

• Fix a crash triggered by having a large number (>64k) of cache files

Linux

• Updated linux runtime 'scout' to 0.20211207.0: add support for webp in SDL2_image
  
• Fixed the starting directory sometimes being incorrect when launching devkit titles
  
• Cleanly report an error if a devkit title is configured without a command line

We're happy to announce our Top Releases of October 2021



As with previous lists, we look at every release for the month, highlighting the Top 20 games and Top 5 DLC releases based on the first two weeks of revenue. We also highlight the top 5 free-to-play games, ranked by the number of unique players they acquired after launch.

The Top Releases of October 2021

It comes as no surprise for a Top Release list, but October was filled with marquee franchises popular around the world. These franchises aren't exclusive to gaming either, with characters and stories cherished by movie-goers and bookworms of all ages. Look no further than the Steam debut of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, which has captivated fans for years with its acclaimed manga series. Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy also landed on Steam this month, becoming a household name over the last decade in comic book shops and box offices everywhere. For Age of Empires IV, the latest installment of this beloved PC franchise will expand into academia, as students will be given a unique opportunity to earn college credit by combining history lessons with base-building. 

October's Top Releases also feature plenty of opportunities for teamwork. With nearly half of this month's releases offering a healthy bite of co-op content, friends and families need only decide what flavor they are in the mood for. Hosting an end-of-year holiday party? Look no further than Escape Simulator, Goose Goose Duck, or Jackbox Party Pack 8 - each bringing its own unique blend of challenge and simplicity. In need of something a bit more dark or visceral? Team up for some zombie slashing action in Back 4 Blood or clutch your friends tightly while navigating the latest frightening chapter of The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes. 

We're always happy to see fresh new content from teams releasing a game on Steam for the first time. Some of these teams have been making games for a while on other platforms, while others are making their very first commercial game. A big welcome and congrats go out to these development teams on their successful Steam debuts.

--

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

• April 2021
  
• May 2021
  
• June 2021
  
• July 2021
  
• August 2021
  
• September 2021

The 2021 Steam Autumn Sale has begun, with great deals across the Steam catalog now through 10am Pacific on Wednesday, December 1st. Discover featured titles and franchises, personalized recommendations, plus browse thousands of discounted titles by top genres and themes when you shop the Autumn Sale now!

Throughout the duration of the Autumn Sale, join us in our sixth annual Steam Awards by nominating your favorite new games of 2021 across 10 categories, and earn profile XP and badges when you do! Your nominations will help determine the finalists for each category. Voting will then take place during the Winter Sale. Select your nominations today!



This year's sale and awards have been illustrated by the illustrious Murugiah, whose Points Shop drop includes an Artist Profile and stickers you won't want to miss.

Note: This update was re-released on November 23rd with the following additional fixes:

General

• Fixed intermittent steamwebhelper crash

Steam Input

• Fixed rare crash when loading controller configs

Original Changes

General

• Various fixes and improvements related to connecting to the Steam servers
  
• Fixed a rare crash/black screen loading library pages
  
• Fixed a blank screen when loading some announcements
  
• Fixed a case where the in-game overlay appeared in some CEF based game launchers in a broken manner
  
• Updated embedded Chromium build in Steam to 84.0.4147.105

Steam Cloud

• Greatly reduce pre- and post-game sync time for apps which have hundreds or thousands of local files managed by Steam Cloud
  
• Replace use of some Windows APIs which have been deprecated and may cause errors on Windows 11
  
• Fixed issue causing “Unknown” or very-old file timestamps in the Sync Conflict dialog
  
• Fixed files not being downloaded on app Install when it had previously been installed on the device
  
• Fixed files not being re-downloaded if deleted by the user or some other process outside of the game

Steam Input

• Improve handling of offline mode by moving locally edited configurations to Steam Cloud. You will now get cloud conflict dialogs when launching a game or opening the controller configuration screen rather than losing changes
  
• Add new Steam Deck glyphs to Steam Input API and visually update the existing glyphs
  
• Fixed a crash related to Steam Remote Play
  
• Fixed issue that could cause some controllers to stay in “guest” mode where they aren’t allowed to export configurations

Remote Play

• Updated macOS input and audio drivers for M1 hardware
  
• Added support for VA-API hardware encoding on Linux (can be disabled by turning off AMD and Intel hardware encoding in the Remote Play advanced host settings)
  
• Added support for DMABUF PipeWire capture on Linux (requires 32-bit libgbm.so.1 and can be enabled by launching Steam with -pipewire-dmabuf)
  
• Added support for capturing up to 4K using PipeWire
  
• Fixed rare crash when streaming a game from a Linux computer
  
• Fixed streaming audio from Intel Mac that has been upgraded from macOS 10.15 to 11.0
  
• Fixed a rare timeout starting to stream from a Linux computer
  
• Fixed crash after a short time when streaming a game to a Linux computer with hardware acceleration

Library

• When sorting a collection by Steam Review, group the games by category (Overwhelmingly Positive, Very Positive, etc) and remove the banners from the bottom of the items

Big Picture

• Fixed launching games when cloud save updates are pending

Soundtracks

• Fixed an issue that would prevent certain lossless audio files from playing correctly through the built-in Steam music player

macOS

• Fixed SteamInput driver installer on M1 hardware blocking game streaming
  
• Fixed minimize/restore buttons not working on some Steam Client windows

Linux

• Updated scout and heavy runtimes: Improve compatibility with recent Let's Encrypt TLS/SSL certificate chains
  
• Added initial support for games using CEG DRM through Proton
  
• Fixed a console window erroneously appearing while launching CEG games. (needs latest Proton Experimental)
  
• Fixed crash at startup with some experimental versions of Mesa

Shader Pre-Caching

• Reduce memory use when processing shader caches
  
• Improve performance and reduce disk I/O when updating Mesa caches on Linux

SteamNetworkingSockets

• Reduce the number of rendezvous signals needed to establish a typical P2P session