No! Stay with me! – Rare and valuable sneak peeks into countless Steam games could dry up as "private branches" spread on SteamDB
Nov. 14, 2024SteamDB says private branches are being enabled for “some games”
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Steam is seemingly making it harder for fans to keep an eye on the behind-the-scenes updates of some games, as it’s now rolling out a way for developers to keep app info private, preventing third-party database SteamDB from tracking them properly.
SteamDB is an incredibly useful source of information for PC players – not only does it keep an up-to-date record of concurrent player counts for Steam releases, but it also allows users to peek at the update history of games. This isn’t just for big patches that developers would widely advertise anyway, but quieter changes like alterations to store pages that can indicate when developers are working on things. However, it sounds like from now on, users won’t be able to access quite as much information as they could before.
“Steam is starting to enable ‘private branches’ in app info for some games, so SteamDB will not be able to track updates for these anymore,” SteamDB revealed in a tweet yesterday.
Whether this change will affect you or not will entirely depend on just how dedicated you are to following every move of your favorite games. ThinkElden Ring–FromSoftwarefans wereglued to the action RPG’s SteamDB page and its changelistbefore the reveal ofShadow of the Erdtree, desperately trying to work out when the developers might bless us with more content. We’ve seen similar before with Hollow Knight: Silksong too, where Metroidvania fans desperate for any news at all havegone wild at the sight of assets being changed.
Needless to say, the more private branches are used, the less SteamDB – and therefore, everyone using it – will be able to keep track of. Notably, the database says this is currently available for “some games,” but doesn’t give any examples, so we can’t be quite sure at this point the full extent of what games are affected. You’d imagine that it could be a rather popular option for developers to take whenever possible, though – many probably aren’t particularly keen about the idea of accidentally spoiling surprise updates before they can even make announcements for them. Depending on how widespread it is, this could end up changing the way fans get some of their upcoming game and update information significantly.
JRPG fans are eating good - as if Metaphor: ReFantazio wasn’t enough, another Persona 5 spin-off seems to be getting a Steam release soon.
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I’m one of GamesRadar+’s news writers, who works alongside the rest of the news team to deliver cool gaming stories that we love. After spending more hours than I can count filling The University of Sheffield’s student newspaper with Pokemon and indie game content, and picking up a degree in Journalism Studies, I started my career at GAMINGbible where I worked as a journalist for over a year and a half. I then became TechRadar Gaming’s news writer, where I sourced stories and wrote about all sorts of intriguing topics. In my spare time, you’re sure to find me on my Nintendo Switch or PS5 playing through story-driven RPGs like Xenoblade Chronicles and Persona 5 Royal, nuzlocking old Pokemon games, or going for a Victory Royale in Fortnite.
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