Steam to Replace Curated Discount Calendar With Personalized Recommendations, Valve Says

Valve said Steam’s Discounts & Events section will move away from a largely manually curated calendar and toward dynamic, personalized recommendations, with the full shift expected in early 2027. In the near term, the company has already stopped taking new bookings for curated placements in that area, including Weekend Deals, Midweek Deals and Daily Deals.

The change, announced in a Steamworks and Steam Community post on Sept. 29, affects one of Steam’s main sale and discount showcases. For shoppers, it changes which discounted games and promotions are surfaced on the storefront. For developers and publishers, it affects a key source of visibility on the PC gaming platform, where placement during a sale can drive traffic and discovery.

Valve said it has spent recent months testing the new approach. In its announcement, the company said: “Our goal with Steam’s discovery features is to show the right game to the right customer, so we spent the last few months experimenting with replacing some curated spots with dynamic and personalized recommendations. By featuring games in a more personalized way in the Discounts & Events section, we were able to show 10x more games to customers in a given day in that section. As a result, we saw meaningful increases in store page visits, wishlists, and cart additions.” Those figures and performance claims were presented by Valve in its own post.

The company said it is still working through the details and does not have a firm launch date beyond saying the curated calendar for that section is expected to end sometime early next year, meaning early 2027. Steam has long used personalization elsewhere on the store, but this is a notable shift because the Discounts & Events area has relied on a fixed calendar with a limited number of featured slots.

Valve also outlined an immediate operational change for developers and publishers. “In the meantime, we have paused scheduling curated placements in that section (Weekend Deals, Midweek Deals, and Daily Deals). If you already have a Weekend Deal, Midweek Deal, or Daily Deal scheduled, its placement will be honored and you don’t need to take any action,” the company said.

That means no new bookings are being added for those curated slots, but previously scheduled placements will still run. The company also said it plans to introduce new and updated tools to help developers manage discounts and sale events with less reliance on direct staff-managed placement.

One early public reaction suggested the tests could materially change exposure for at least some smaller games. Tim Bender, CEO of publisher Hooded Horse, wrote on LinkedIn that one unnamed game received 7,341 visits from the Discounts & Events grid in the last month, compared with 7,355 visits across the previous six months combined. He added: “This change took a source of traffic that was non-existent for niche indies, and suddenly made it the best source of traffic in the entire store.” That is one developer’s anecdotal example, not broad evidence of how the shift will affect all games on Steam.

Valve’s announcement is about how discounted games are recommended and displayed, not about changing prices dynamically. For now, the company says it is continuing to tune the system ahead of a broader rollout in early 2027 and will provide updated tools to help developers adapt once the curated calendar is phased out.