Steam新闻 篇三：Steam新版客户端或将可按厂商、语言、发售日、类型等方式分类游戏

来自粉枪社的消息，Steam Database 在推特发文，发现了 Valve 似乎正在增加 PICS（一个用来给 Steam 客户端发送数据的系统）的信息：

Valve has added more information to the system that provides Steam clients with data. This includes Steam and original release dates, supported languages, associations, categories, genres.
We suspect this might be used in the upcoming client design overhaul.

Valve 给 Steam 客户端提供信息的系统添加了更多的信息。其中包括了 Steam 与原始游戏发售日期、支持的语言、附属项目、分类与标签。
我们怀疑这可能会用于即将上线的新版 Steam 客户端。

在 Reddit 上也展开了相关的讨论，网友 aiusepsi 对此进行了补充说明：

As some background/context: Steam has a system called PICS which is used by the Steam client to retrieve information about games. This system is how the client knows what name and logo to show in the library, what OSes are supported, what version of the game to download, if there are any betas, what executable to launch when you hit "play", etc. The client listens to the PICS feed and grabs information from it whenever an app you own gets the information stored in PICS for it updated. This is how the client finds out about new game patches.
The primary thing that SteamDB does is listen to the stream of information coming from PICS and store and display it all (although they do mix in some other sources as well for stuff like prices). When they say in their tweet: "system that provides Steam clients with data" they mean PICS.
So yes: if stuff like categories and genres and release dates (stuff that heretofore has only been on the store) is turning up in PICS, it is extremely likely indeed that Valve intends to display or use all this stuff in the next version of the library. Which is a good thing: people have been wanting auto-categorisation based on store tags for a long time.

相关背景：Steam 有一个名叫 PICS 的系统，Steam 客户端通过这个系统获取游戏的信息。这个系统可以用来让 Steam 客户端知道游戏的名字和展示在游戏库中的图标、游戏支持哪些操作系统、下载的游戏是哪个版本的、是否有测试版本、点击「开始」按钮后会运行哪个可执行文件，等等。Steam 客户端会监听 PICS 发送的数据，并且当游戏的相关数据发生更新时，抓取最新的数据。这就是 Steam 客户端能够获得最新的游戏补丁的方法。
最主要的是，SteamDB 所做的就是监听来自 PICS 和 Steam 商店的信息流，并且将其展现给使用者（尽管他们在其中混入了一些其他来源的数据，比如游戏价格）。他们在推文里说到的「Steam 客户端提供信息的系统」就是指的 PICS。
那么，如果像分类、游戏标签以及游戏发售日期（这些信息之前只能在 Steam 商店看到）出现在了 PICS 里，那么很有可能 Valve 打算在新版本的 Steam 游戏库中展示或者使用到这些数据。这是好事：玩家们一直想要的基于游戏标签分类游戏的功能就要实现了。

相关工具：Depressurizer - Steam分类编辑器

如果这个功能在新版 Steam 客户端实装了，想按分类或者是厂商找游戏就会更加便捷。