Steam continues to dominate the PC gaming market – 72% of developers believe the store holds a functional monopoly on the market. But the lack of real competition doesn't mean Valve shouldn't strive for anything. PC Gamer Portal speakWhat Steam will do in 2026.
More detailed user rating options
Currently, player reviews on Steam are divided into only two binary categories – thumbs up or thumbs down. At the same time, many games can be recommended to other users, warning about any serious shortcomings and vice versa – advising them not to buy bad games of good quality. Not to mention releases that don't make an impression at all.
A five-star rating system or optional ratings for specific attributes such as graphics, mechanics, and accessibility would be very helpful to consumers. Many users and developers are asking for something similar. It would be nice to see the system characteristics of players who have left reviews – optional of course. This information will help evaluate performance and optimize the game.
Update game pages in the store
Paradoxically, Steam still doesn't have a SteamDB-style price tracker that allows you to track the price fluctuations of a particular game over time. Such information is useful for consumers: most players want to save money, and a tracking tool would make it easier.
Steam could borrow another useful feature from the Xbox for PC app – HowLongToBeat integration. Essentially, it uses user-provided site statistics to indicate how long it will take to complete a game. Furthermore, the data changes depending on whether the player is aiming for 100% completion or not.
New section in the library
Readers can learn a lot from Steam, but Steam can learn a thing or two from Goodreads. A small section showing what games are currently in progress would be very handy along with a progress bar. Many players like to play multiple games at once, and a feature like this helps organize a “workspace” in the library.
Classification of achievements
Steam achievements are nominally effective but lack quality of life. For example, although the app shows the percentage of achievements received, achievements from the base game and expansions are often mixed together, making it sometimes impossible to achieve 100%. For example, if you want to get 100% achievements in The Witcher 3 today, then to do this you need to complete achievements not only from the base game, but also from both add-ons. For some reason, PlayStation was able to create spin-offs for add-ons that appeared after the release of the original game – there's no reason Steam couldn't do the same.
Improvement workshop
Although Steam Mod Workshop makes installing mods easy and convenient, it still has a lot of room for improvement. In terms of functionality, it is still inferior to independent mod managers, not to mention the workshop is not integrated into every game. In 2026, it would be nice to see support for older games, such as Fallout: New Vegas, that require the entire mod pack to be installed.
Set up favorites list
There's been a wishlist on Steam for years now, but there are very few tools to manage it. Sorting by parameters alone is not enough for convenience. Why not organize your wish list according to the library's own guidelines? It's time to add the ability to separate wishlist games by category, or even create separate wishlists by genre or other criteria. For example, one list is for games you really want to buy and another is for games that might be interesting on sale.
SteamOS optimization
SteamOS has improved significantly over several years of updates and supports thousands of new games, but progress in hardware and drivers has been slower. Currently, the operating system only works on Steam Deck and Legion Go; ROG Ally and “other mobile devices running AMD chips” are in beta testing. But the Steam Machine will be released in 2026, and in that context, porting SteamOS to regular PCs would be great news. Supports Nvidia GPU and Intel CPU, smooth installation process.
Currently, PC gamers who want to switch from Windows to something else must install Bazzite instead of SteamOS. But many people feel intimidated by switching to a community Linux distribution rather than a system developed and supported by Valve.
