Augmented Steam Plugin Offers Enhanced Steam Experience
Steam with advanced filters and information about price changes, player activity, DRM, etc.? No, this is not a new update from Valve, but the Augmented Steam plugin. The expansion for Chrome and Firefox makes browsing Steam's catalogue much easier.
Valve is constantly developing Steam, adding more features or improving the performance of old ones. But if that's still not enough for you, you can check out Augmented Steam, a plugin for Chrome and Firefox browsers that adds a handful of interesting options related to the platform. So far over 100 thousand users have downloaded it. IsThereAnyDeal group, which you can find on Steam, is responsible for development of the extension.
The original plugin was created under the name Enhanced Steam as the work of Jason Shackles, who, however, abandoned the project after five years. It was then picked up by the members of IsThereAnyDeal, who rebuilt it from scratch, improving old features and adding new ones. Augmented Steam requires a connection to the group's servers, but the developers ensure that the information downloaded is related to the ID of the displayed games, chosen currency, or Steam ID (the data is deleted after 30-90 days).
Augmented Steam adds a few useful features.
Improvements offered by the plugin come down to making it easier to browse games on Steam. We can use additional filters to include (or exclude) games, wishlist entries, titles with mostly negative or mixed feedback etc. Augmented Steam also enables us to check the regional price of a given product and whether it has ever been available at a lower price on Steam or in digital distribution stores. Of course, this does not include local stationary stores.
Augmented Steam also provides information about the average ratings on Opencritic, the game being included in sets, saved money, etc. The plugin also uses HowLongToBeat.com and Steam Charts to display how many hours of gameplay can the title provide and how many people are still playing it.
