Valve will replace the manually curated calendar behind Steam's Discounts and Events tab with algorithm-driven, personalized recommendations, ending curated placements entirely by early next year.

The company announced the change Tuesday, saying it will "move away from a manual calendar-based approach and into something more dynamic and personalized for each customer." Until the full switchover — roughly estimated for early 2027 by Valve, with more timing details promised in the coming weeks — games rotate in and out of the section either at Valve's own scheduling or "scheduled directly by partners via Steamworks."

For developers, the shift moves a significant store visibility lever from relationship-driven pitching to algorithmic selection. Valve has already "paused scheduling curated placements" on the page, though partners with existing bookings keep their slots.

The results from Valve's own testing explain the decision. "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," Valve wrote. "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."

Valve says it will ship "new and updated tools" so developers can better manage their discounts and sale events on the platform. The framing is pointed: "Our goal is to let developers focus on crafting the most compelling games and deals for customers, and not spend time trying to convince someone at Valve to feature their products."

Early signals from indies

The change follows months of quiet experimentation. In September, GameDiscoverCo founder and former Game Developer publisher Simon Carless observed that the featured games on the Discounts and Events page had become more personalized, calling it "a good move to help the little guys, done quietly."

Hooded Horse CEO Tim Bender responded to Carless's post on LinkedIn with hard traffic data. Screenshots of an unnamed game's analytics showed the Discounts and Events page drove more than 7,000 visits to that game's Steam page in one month, compared with 7,355 across the previous six months. "So only 14 visits from the prior 5 months," Bender wrote.

"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," Bender said.

What changes for studios

The operational implications cut both ways. Studios that previously secured curated placements through Valve partnerships lose a guaranteed visibility channel and will instead compete for algorithmic placement, with discovery determined by Steam's personalization systems rather than manual selection. Niche and smaller titles appear to be early winners: if the 10x figure holds, far more games surface in the section daily than the curated calendar ever allowed.

Discount planning also changes. Valve's promise of updated management tools suggests partners will need to reconsider how they time and structure sale events, since a well-configured deal feeding the recommendation system may matter more than a scheduled calendar slot. Studios should watch for the tooling details Valve says are coming alongside the transition.

The industry has seen this pattern before: algorithmic storefront curation consistently rewards engagement and conversion signals over publisher relationships. For teams already investing in wishlist velocity, store page conversion and demo performance, the change reinforces those metrics as the primary currency of Steam visibility.

Valve expects more games to appear on the page overall once the system is fully in place — a net expansion of featured inventory that could raise the floor for indie discoverability while diluting the value of any single placement.

Watch for Valve's scheduling announcements in the upcoming weeks and the formal end of the curated calendar early next year, which will mark the point studios can no longer book placements on the page.