Steam has numerous systems in place to recommend games to people as accurately and precisely as possible. And now Steam is trying to do the same for DLC, preparing a new personalized hub called the "DLC Discovery Hub" (opens in new tab).

The DLC Discovery Lab is the latest new feature to emerge from Steam Labs, the experimental playground Valve uses to collect and test new Steam features. In previous years, the company has offered Interactive Recommender (opens in new tab), Community Recommendations (opens in new tab), a personalized news hub (opens in new tab), and an expanded search option (opens in new tab), but this latest feature is designed to help you find additional content for the games you already own. This newest feature is designed to connect you with additional content for the games you already own.

The hub is divided into two sections. At the top is "Popular DLC for your game," which displays a scrollable list of the hottest DLC for the games in your library. The only thing that matters in this list is the popularity of the DLC. So, for example, the Dune Stalker Starter Pack for Modern Warfare 2 is first on the list, even though I haven't touched MW2 or Warzone 2 in years.

The second big section is more interesting. Here, DLC for the most recently played or most played games is listed. Naturally, these temporal values are complicated by elements of behind-the-scenes algorithmic magic. For example, the "most played" category is "ordered by the most played games within the past few years," according to Valve, followed by "most played games in the past time period."

This is further down the list for games I have played but not in a long span of time, such as Wolfenstein: Fallout 4, BattleTech, Grim Dawn, and Dishonored.

This is not Steam's most important feature, but I can see the value in it instead of endlessly scrolling through Steam's new games page when looking for something. Especially when it comes to older games that I might have forgotten: for example, I noticed Melody of Mystery, the DLC for Trine 4, thanks to the new tool. I noticed Melody of Mystery, the DLC for Trine 4, thanks to a new tool.

Like all new Steam Lab releases, the DLC Discovery Hub is effectively a beta test. If you have bugs or suggestions to report, you can do so in the Steam Labs community group (opens in new tab).