For PC gamers Valve’s digital game platform is a great place forfinding gaming bargains, discovering new games, keeping track ofupcoming titlesand more.
There’s so much more to Steam than first meets the eye though, including a wealth of features you might not have even realised existed.
So stick with us to find out what these are and how you could use them to level-up your gaming.
Get personalised game recommendations
Steam is really good at recommending games and trying to get you to part with your hard-earned money. You’ll often find good-quality game recommendations on the store homepage, via the discovery queue and even through the best-sellers list.
Did you know that there’s arecommendation enginethat you can use to filter things down even further and that these recommendations are then based on your playtime with other games?
To access this:
There are a number of filters that you can choose to apply here to adjust what you’re seeing in these personalised recommendations. You can filter by age, for example, so you only see new games, adjust it so you see more or less popular recommendations and apply tags too.
If you want to see just co-op games, for example, you can do that. Aren’t a fan of a particular genre? You can turn that off too. You can also exclude games that are already on your wishlist.
Find games to play with your friends
Sometimes it can be a struggle to find games to play but it can be even harder to find games that you can play with your friends.
Especially if one of you is strapped for cash or if you’re looking for something to play together but aren’t really sure what’s available.
Luckily Steam makes it possible to filter your library and see games that you both own. So you can easily see at a glance whether you even have the same games available to play and thereby narrow your options without having to psychically ask your friend to manually dig through their accounts.
To do this is also really simple:
The great thing about this tool is if you’re struggling with figuring out what to play you can filter the view to include games by a particular genre, whether the game is currently installed or not, co-op and multiplayer options and more.
Of course, you’ve still got to verify you’re both in the same mood, but this process makes it much easier.
Stream Steam games to other devices
If you’ve got a fast homeWi-Fi networkthen one of the other highlights of Steam is the ability to Stream games to other devices so you’re able to play PC games while you’re away from yourgaming machine.
We’ve written anin-depth guide about thisin the past, but it opens up a world of gaming in your home because you can stream games to all sorts of things. Play on everything including yourApple iPhonetoAndroid phonesand tablets, Raspberry Pi,Apple TVand more besides.
If you also have aSteam Deckthendoing this can be worthwhilein other ways because it saves the processing power of your handheld console and instead harnesses your PC. So you’ll have a higher FPS and a smoother gaming experience, even when playing remotely.
If you’re experiencing slow Steam downloads where your games are taking a while to come down from the cloud then there are varioussteps you’re able to take to improve those speeds.
On the flip side, there are other things that you can tweak under these settings if you have great Wi-Fi or fast home broadband with an ethernet connection. For example, you can allow downloads while you’re playing games, so you’ve got something to do while you’re waiting for your new game to download.
Play around with these settings until you find the right ones for you.
Transfer Steam games locally
So you know it’s possible to download games on Steam, stream them from one device to another and more. But did you know that you can alsotransfer Steam games locally on your home network?
If you’ve got a game download on your gaming PC and then want to also play it on your Steam Deck (without streaming it) or on a laptop or on a friend’s PC, then you may transfer games across without having to re-download it.
There are a few things to note about it:
Hide a game from your Steam recommendations
If you’re constantly getting recommended a popular game on the Steam store but you’ve already played it elsewhere or just aren’t interested in it, then you can hide it.
Click on the game in question in the store to open its store page and then click ignore. From there you may then select the option that applies.
You’ll see you can hide the game from the store if you’ve played it on another platform. This is perfect in our example here as we regularly getRed Dead Redemption 2recommended to us, especially during Steam sales because it’s so popular, but we’ve already played it via Rockstar’s game launcher.
Customise your Discovery queue
It’s also possible to customise what you see when you click through the Discovery queue too.
This can help when you’re lost for games to play and need some recommendations but don’t want to keep seeing anime and horror games for example.
To do this click on the Store menu at the top of Steam and then click to access the Discovery queue. Once there you’ll see an option to “customise your queue”, click that and you’re able to then tweak which things are shown but you can also add tags of things you don’t want to see.
This is particularly useful as Steams tagging system is really detailed, so you can eliminate even niche genres like games with pixel graphics orfree-to-play gamesif those aren’t your thing.
Uninstall multiple games at once
If you’re trying to free up space on your computer did you know that it’s possible to uninstall multiple games at once with relative ease?
This will uninstall all the games you selected and you won’t need to do one at a time.
This also works the other way as you can install multiple games at once as well. Just follow the same steps as above and click install games when ready. Easy. This is perfect if you’re setting up a new PC and readying your game library for fun.
Sort out your storage space issues
If you find that you’re running out of space on your PC or on a particular game drive then Steam offers up a solution to make your life easier. With a few clicks it’s possible to see which games are taking up the most space so you can make room. This is handy because you don’t need to click through various games in your library to suss it out.
You can then see at a glance how many games are installed, how much space they’re taking up and a handy reminder of when you last played the game.
This is a fantastic way to see which games you can uninstall to quickly free up storage space. You can also see the largest games and how much space your games library is taking up on that drive.
Request a refund for a Steam game
One of the best features of Steam is likely one that Valve doesn’t want us to harp on about and that’sSteam’s refund policy.
Steam has a great option for refunding games if you’ve made a mistake and bought something you shouldn’t have. We’ve written a guide about this before, but essentially it gives you the ability to request a refund for a game as long as you haven’t played more than two hours of it and request the refund within 14 days of purchasing.
This is perfect if you’ve bought a game then found it’s full of bugs, won’t run on your PC or is just awful for another reason. Valve is also really reasonable about this, so as long as you don’t abuse the system you can buy with confidence and refund when necessary.
