Valve is reportedly bringing an exciting new feature to Steam Community
Valve appears to be preparing a native polls feature for Steam Community. New interface strings depict how creators could embed "User Polls" inside Events and Announcements to question their audiences. The strings are visible in recent screenshots and reference-specific settings rather than simple placeholders, which typically indicates the feature is in development rather than speculative.
The text labels describe a full poll workflow: authors can set an end time either "after x days" or at a specific timestamp and define who is eligible to vote, including "any logged‑in Steam user," "Steam users with this game in their library," "Steam users with at least X playtime," or "members of this group". There are result‑visibility toggles such as "only the admins of this group can view results," "only those who voted can view results," or "everyone can view results after the poll closes," along with an "on‑demand" option that implies result pages can be opened any time by permitted viewers. Other labels have a minimum playtime requirement, a background image for the poll, and standard choice authoring like "Add a Poll Choice" and "Edit User Poll Choice," which likely refers to a templated editor rather than ad‑hoc forum hacks.
The top tooltip string explicitly says "embedded in this event," which falls in line with Valve’s Events and Announcements system that developers already use to distribute updates across store pages, libraries, and community hubs. There's a high chance that polls could ride the same publishing rails if launched. Steam’s Community and Steamworks documentation frame these hubs as the central venue for user‑generated content and developer outreach, so adding polls would be consistent with existing communication tools rather than a separate social feed. The leak surfaced courtesy of u/Stannis_Loyalist on r/Steam - who has a reliable track record. Regardless, this is evidence based on strings surfaced by users and shared via community monitoring rather than a live rollout.
If implemented, the voter‑eligibility and minimum‑playtime gates could help mitigate brigading, while post‑close visibility controls could allow creators to share results privately with admins or broadly with all readers once a poll ends. Until an official client or Steamworks note lands, treat this as a work‑in‑progress experiment spotted in the UI text, not a shipped feature.
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