If the rise of the Epic Games Store has taught us anything, it's that Steam has some... pretty loyal players. As it turns out, Valve is reportedly looking into ways to keep long-time users invested and happy, and presumably offer some kind of greater incentive for them to stay with Steam as more and more digital storefronts start to spring up.
Steam dataminers have started to come across references to some kind of reward system. According to what's been found so far, this new feature will offer the chance to earn various reward items and badge levels that could (possibly) eventually culminate in discounts on select titles.
"Valve is working on loyalty awards/rewards," SteamDB developer Pavel Djundik wrote on Twitter. "It has a point system, and a system to add reactions to user reviews. Also includes reward items, redeeming points for badge levels, and possibly game discounts."
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This is far from confirmed at this stage, but I'm sure we can all agree it'd be a pretty great thing for Valve to implement. Frankly, I've always found it baffling that more storefronts and publishers don't have reward systems for their customers. Hell, even Nintendo has a points-based system where purchases earn a sort of currency that can be used to buy exclusive items or exchanged for discounts on titles.
Datminers also uncovered a few references that imply we're getting a wider range of ways to respond to reviews. At the moment, you can only really "react" to a customer review as helpful, unhelpful, or funny. These new options would seemingly offer a much deeper selection of reactions, including 'deep thoughts', 'heartwarming', 'hilarious', 'hot take', and 'poetry'. At long last, I'll be able to filter all Steam reviews and pull out the best poems.
We've no idea if - or exactly when - these new features will make their way to Steam. However, I'm sure most of us can agree that enhanced features for reviews and a loyalty/rewards system are long overdue. Of course, what would be really special is if we could convert out existing libraries into points... but I expect if that happened Valve might actually go broke in about a day.
Featured Image Credit: Valve