Steam News Hub shows posts from your favourite quirky PC gaming websites now
Smash that "follow" button on the RPS curator page to see us in your Steam news feed
Steam Labs' News Hub experiment has been in the works since March, but now it's nearly finished. In a big update before its full launch, you're now able to see news and articles from your favourite delightful and quirky PC gaming websites. Previously, the News Hub was limited to developer updates from games you play and follow, but now there's a selection of other sources including "top sites" (like RPS, of course), with more to come in the future.
Steam Labs is where Valve conduct all their mad science to come up with features that might improve the platform. Recently it introduced optional chat filters for profanity and slurs, and it's also birthed a system that tells you what games you should play next.
And now we have a system that tells you what news to read next. You can have a browse of the Steam News Hub for yourself right here.
On your feed, it will automatically show you updates and posts from developers of games you play (you automatically follow these sources if a game is in your library), with a new option to have articles from news outlets appear, too. I've given it a little go, and yeah, it's pretty good. It's nice to see bits and pieces from game devs themselves mixed in with posts from external websites right there on Steam.
News sources use the Steam Curator system, so any curators you currently follow will already show up in your new News Hub without needing to follow them again. If you are looking to follow someone new, just head over to their curator page and smash that big green "follow" button.
The big idea behind all this is to let you completely personalise your feed to your own tastes, so you're able to unfollow and mute sources if you just don't want to see them at all. There are also a load of filters allowing you to hide or show certain content, including an option to hide all the external news entirely, if you so wish.
While they don't give an actual date for Steam New Hub's full launch, Valve do say it's "nearing completion". So, it shouldn't be long now before it graduates from Steam Labs Experiment, to fully fledged feature.