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. pic.twitter.com/34YRSW8YkDNovember 13, 2024
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. Think Elden Ring – FromSoftware fans were glued to the action RPG's SteamDB page and its changelist before the reveal of Shadow 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 have gone 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.
