Steam's Discovery Queue, explained
2 min read
By Eduardo Orellana ·
The Discovery Queue is a personal list of games Steam shows each player one at a time, picked from what that player plays, buys and wishlists, with tags matching games to tastes. Valve does not publish how a game gets into a queue; its documentation only names the queue as one of the places a game may be recommended. What you control is what Steam uses to match: accurate, specific tags, and sales and play that show players like your game.
You cannot submit to the Discovery Queue
There is no form, no fee and no opt-in. Steam decides which games appear in each player's queue, from that player's own behaviour. A developer's levers are indirect: making Steam understand what the game is and who likes it.
What Valve says
Valve's visibility documentation names the Discovery Queue as a place a game might be recommended, alongside curators, and says recommendations draw on players' preferences and on whether people are buying and playing a game. It does not describe the queue's mechanics. Separately, Steam's New Releases queue favours titles with the fewest views since release.
What you control
- Tags: specific ones in the top five, matching comparable games.
- The capsule and first screenshots: what a player sees in the queue before skipping.
- Sales and play: outside traffic that becomes players Steam can learn from.
- Seasonal sales: Steam's sale events have historically rewarded players for browsing queues, which brings more eyes to them.
Where Flockbay fits
Flockbay's Steam page sets tags from comparable games and cuts the capsule from a real frame of your game, as a .zip you upload yourself. Drafting is free in beta until 1 December 2026.