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Valve seems to have quietly added a Steam feature that people have been asking for for a long time: the ability to add a game to your library without having to download it. It may seem like a small thing (and it really is), but in the past, players had to make extra moves to do this. Basically, this feature is only useful when downloading free games.
This new Steam feature was not published in any of this week’s Steam update notes, so only the most attentive noticed it. Twitter user RobotBrush was the first to notice this, as you can see in the screenshot below there is a regular “Play” button next to the new “Add to Library” button. For some reason it has not been translated into Russian.
As noted by other users in replies to this tweet and in other threads where this feature was discussed, the “Add to Library” option was already available to a certain extent. There was no dedicated button for this action, and to achieve a similar effect, players needed to activate game download in order for the game to be added to the library. Now this has essentially been reduced to the single button you see in the picture above. A trifle, but nice.
For paid games, this is not very useful, since you still have to purchase the game before adding it to the library. But given the ubiquity of free-to-play games these days and the lack of an end to this method of monetization, this feature will only get more useful as more free-to-play games are released. It will also come in handy when getting free DLC for a game you already own.
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