For years, Steam provided users with tools to organize their communities through groups directly in the browser of its digital game store. Valve actively tried to expand Steam functionality to cement its dominance in the videogame market and, in doing so, prevent users from engaging with other platforms. Over time, however, when it became clear that other digital game stores such as Epic Games Store or Microsoft Store were unable to challenge Steam monopoly, Valve realized the market was under control and that no real effort was necessary, ultimately leading to a partial abandonment of support for various community features.
There was a time when Steam was so foundational that creating groups on it was the norm. The Alium Community used event notification features for years, until Valve broke them in the early 2020s. For almost its entire existence, The Alium Сommunity relied on discussion tools, but over the past two years their condition has deteriorated significantly, with posts often getting stuck in infinite review. In 2025, the situation worsened further when announcements broke as well, making them impossible to publish — just like discussions, they too were sent into infinite review. In 2026, our patience finally ran out, and we decided to move this functionality to our own website. Announcements will now be published there, the staff table will be updated there, the description and joining guide will be migrated, and in the future there may also be a dedicated page for current concepts. In short, the site allows everything to work properly and look well-designed — something Steam can no longer offer us.
Discord, despite being the platform through which most of our communication happens, raises serious concerns about its quality. Various microtransactions, poor optimization, and file upload limitations can significantly restrict the development freedom we are striving for. I know that Steam borrowed ideas from Discord for its community updates, but after its failed experiment and attempt to eliminate a competitor in the form of that social network, competition was effectively abandoned on a massive scale. As a result, there is little confidence that Steam will make any meaningful effort to maintain its community features. Still, if Steam restores its functionality, we will continue publishing there.
The site is not yet fully complete: we are still migrating old articles and posts — and it is important to understand that a great many of them have accumulated over the years. Along with the migration of old announcements, Ukrainian translations will be added. Later, we will likely add other interesting things to click through on the site. For now, it is intended primarily as an archive. From this point on, all guides with posts and articles in different languages on Steam are no longer supported.
