Valve Introduces Steam Labs for Public Testing on Experimental Services

Valve has just made their digital storefront Steam a lot more interesting. The company has announced a brand new feature, called Steam Labs, which will function as a special testing area for services that are still a work in progress. Valve will take any and all feedback from those who participate in the testing, and will make a determination on whether they need more work or not.

The company is making three experimental services available for testing right away, with more to be added later. The first one is called Micro Trailers, which are essentially even shorter game trailers compiled into one video. The second one, The Interactive Recommender, is similar to a searching algorithm as it uses the top games you have played from your library and gives you recommendations for new titles. The third one is titled Automated Show, and as you can guess is one giant video that showcases the newest games in the Steam Store, based again on your algorithm.

Micro Trailers and Automated Show can be viewed in a general setting, but for the Interactive Recommender, you’ll need to sign into your own Steam Account. All three are fairly intriguing in their own right, but the real meat and potatoes of this is that Valve is unloading some of their weird, quirky, and unusual features for all of us to try out. In a sense, we have become our own Q&A Testers for Valve and Steam. As we stated earlier, Valve will be accepting all feedback from anyone who tests these experiments out, including whether they should be canceled or not.