The Steam platform has a dizzying library of games, with tens of thousands of options for just about every genre you can imagine, not to mention countless Steam Workshop mods and DLC. The search feature really works when you already know exactly what you’re looking for, and Steam will show you related games that you might be interested in even if you don’t have a very specific keyword to search for.
Steam search gets a surprise boost, making it easier to find new games
If you regularly explore digital games on the Steam platform, your search should soon become easier. Valve is expanding Steam’s auto-suggest feature in response to increasing player searches for specific store hubs, tags, or developers. Previously, you could narrow down your search using tag types with filtering capabilities, but this was only possible after you had performed a search action.
Now, when you type in the main search field, the platform will immediately display relevant tags matching the search, and clicking on these tags will instantly navigate to the list of game search results filtered by this type. This new feature design makes it easy for players to find a single tab like Free Games, Survival Games or Zombie Games. The update also makes it easier for users to find their favorite developers, publishers or resellers, etc. Previously, when you accessed a publisher or reseller’s page, you had to click from the main page of the game in the store first. Now, you can jump directly to the publisher’s page directly from the search field. For example, you can type in the publisher “Bethesda” to find all the games they release, or enter a name like “Star War” to see the game’s exclusive page for resellers.
Another notable improvement to Steam’s search feature is its ability to detect misspelled words. Previously, if you typed in the wrong word, your search would just tell you nothing was found, or that it wasn’t exactly what you were looking for. Now a quick search result will bring up the game it thinks you’re looking for. The author tried it out and entered “fnla fntasy” to find the game I was looking for in the real-time display. As before, performing a full search with a misspelled word will show a blank in the full results list, but Steam still allows players to auto-correct searches by pressing the correct word at the top. Having said that, the dropdown autocorrect doesn’t currently seem to work for anything other than game titles.
This enhanced Steam search feature is not only available on the desktop client, but also extends to the mobile and web versions, please make sure you have updated the Steam client to the latest version, or update the mobile app on Android and iOS , you should see the changes right away.
