A PC gamer frustrated by the limitations of Valve’s storefront has built a custom “to play” library shelf on Steam, filling a gap that many players have long felt exists in the platform’s game management features. The project addresses a common pain point: maintaining an organized queue of games someone actually intends to start soon, rather than simply relying on whatever was recently played.
The developer explained that despite years of updates and new Steam features, the storefront still lacks robust hobby tracking capabilities that many players expect from a modern gaming platform. Rather than waiting for Valve to address these shortcomings, they took matters into their own hands by constructing a personalized solution tailored to their specific workflow needs.
Filling a Gap in Steam’s Library Management
The core motivation behind the project stems from a simple observation about how players actually organize their gaming intentions. Most people maintain mental or physical lists of games they want to play, yet Steam’s default library views do not provide an intuitive way to capture these plans in a dedicated space.
Instead of offering a clean “to play” queue, the platform defaults to showing recently played titles when users browse their libraries. While this feature has its uses for remembering what you were working through last week, it fails to serve as a reliable indicator of future intentions. Games can sit in that recent list indefinitely, cluttering the view with titles no one plans to return to.
“Steam still doesn’t have all the hobby tracking features I want so I made myself a custom ‘to play’ library shelf to queue up what I want to put time into soon without falling back on the standard recent games shelf.”
[Developer]
The Problem with Recent Games as Default
The reliance on recent games functionality represents a broader design philosophy within Steam’s library interface. The platform prioritizes showing activity over planning, which suits some users but leaves others searching for better organizational tools.
Many in the gaming community have expressed similar frustrations online, noting that features like wishlists and playtime tracking exist but do not combine into a cohesive system for managing gaming goals. A dedicated “to play” shelf would allow players to curate their upcoming sessions with intention rather than defaulting to whatever happens to appear at the top of their library.
The custom solution built by this developer demonstrates that the demand for such features is real enough that individual users will invest time creating workarounds. This pattern of community-driven innovation frequently pushes platforms toward improvement, as developers watch how players adapt tools in ways the original creators never anticipated.
Looking Ahead
While this particular project began as a personal solution to satisfy one player’s organizational preferences, it highlights ongoing conversations about Steam’s feature set and where Valve might direct future development. Community members have responded positively to the initiative, with many sharing their own wishlist items for platform improvements.
The broader question remains whether Valve will eventually incorporate dedicated planning features into Steam itself, or whether such customization will continue to be left to individual users who build their own tools. For now, this developer’s “to play” shelf stands as a working example of how the gaming community fills functional gaps that commercial platforms have yet to address.
As PC gaming continues to grow and player expectations evolve around personalization and organization, projects like this serve as reminders that user feedback often drives innovation from unexpected directions. Whether Valve adopts similar features or players continue building their own solutions, the demand for better game management tools shows no signs of diminishing.
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