Developers and publishers will now be able to create customized bundles on Steam, which contains games from different studios. So Valve’s new feature creates new opportunities both for devs and players.
Steam first introduced bundles in 2016, allowing players to get multiple games together at a discount. The thing is that now developers can collaborate with each other to create collections of different games from different series.
It works really simple. First, a developer has to create a bundle, which contains at least one of their games. Then Steam allows them to enable a so-called collaborative mode and invite other studios/publishers to participate.
After that, other developers add their own games to the bundle using Steamworks. Once all the games are added, the owner of the collection locks the bundle from further editing and may publish it on Steam. Developers also are allowed to choose the number of games in the bundle, royalty split, and discounts.
The important thing is that if players have some games from the bundle in their library, they will only pay for titles that they don’t own at the time.
So the new tool, for example, allows creators of different RPGs to collaborate with each other and offer bundles of their best games at discount. It also lets players get collections of different games from one franchise/universe developed or published by different companies.
In other words, it is something similar to Humble Bundle’s limited-time offers, but only for Steam developers. The full documentation for the new feature can be found here.