A few months ago, Valve kicked off a beta test of its new idea to widen the store page view of Steam. In addition to making content like screenshots and videos larger, the change also affected how developers presented their games in the description. Now, the change is officially rolling out to all Steam users, so expect to see the new store page everywhere on the platform.
The change increases the length of the content from 940 pixels to 1200 pixels. As for why Valve went with this number, it said that the number was a good balance between showing more content without overwhelming the user with information. Even if the client window is narrower than 1200 pixels, incase the window isn"t full screen or the user is on a smaller screen device, the page should adjust dynamically as usual.
"The trailer and screenshot carousel now supports three different modes (default, theater mode, full-screen mode) with the same functionality," says Valve. "All modes adhere to your preferences for whether to auto-play trailers and whether audio should be on or off by default."
More page real estate means images and videos will be higher resolution without needing to be full-screened as well. Development tools to improve game descriptions with "higher-quality images and more interesting formatting" as well as background imagery have been introduced for game developers maintaining pages too.
The store page update has also affected some other areas of the Steam store:
- Search results are wider and each row is slightly taller giving a little more room for the game artwork to increase in size.
- Bundle detail pages also now have slightly more colorful backgrounds and larger artwork in the list of contents.
- Recommendation pages like the Interactive Recommender and Popular Among Friends are wider.
- Store hubs such as for individual tags (eg. Supernatural) have always been a little wider than game pages. We updated these now to all be the same width.
- Steam Charts and News Hub were both slightly different sizes and even different sets of colors. These have been consolidated some to bring them more inline with Steam platform colors.
It looks like Valve"s next target for the widening treatment is the front page. The company said that similar adjustments to the store pages are coming soon to that page too, but they aren"t ready to reveal it yet. Expect this to hit the Steam beta client first before its rollout too.