Steam Discussions
Steam Discussions reads your game’s public Steam discussion boards and brings what players write into BetaHub. Bug reports become bugs, repeated requests become suggestions, and every post feeds Sentiments. Your team works on Steam feedback in the same place as everything else, and nobody has to read the boards by hand.
BetaHub only reads. Nothing is posted to Steam, players are not notified, and Steam user names are never stored.
When to Use
- Your game has an active Steam Community Hub and players report bugs there instead of in your Discord or forms.
- You want to see what players think of a patch or feature, including players who never join your Discord.
- You want Steam feedback counted with feedback from your other channels, with duplicates merged.
Requirements
- Pro or Enterprise plan
- A role that can manage integrations (the Developer role can) to connect a game, change settings, and start crawls
- A role that can view analytics to open the Steam Discussions page
How It Works
- Discover: BetaHub finds the sub-forums of your game’s Community Hub (for example General Discussions and Bug Reports).
- Read: it opens each thread that had activity in the crawl window, one page per second.
- Classify: AI decides whether a thread is a bug report, a suggestion, or neither, and writes a title and description.
- Match: each bug and suggestion is compared with your existing records. A match is added to the existing record instead of creating a duplicate.
- Import: new bugs are created at once. A new suggestion waits until enough threads ask for the same thing.
- Sentiment: every post written inside the window goes to Sentiments, with one channel per sub-forum.
Imported records are attributed to the Steam Community reporter and link back to the Steam thread. Required custom fields are skipped for them, since Steam posts cannot fill them in.
Connecting a Game
- Open your project and click Steam Discussions in the sidebar.
- Click Connect a Steam game.
- Paste the game’s Steam store URL, Community Hub URL, or app ID.
- Review the settings (see below), then connect. You can start the first crawl right away.
The first crawl reads threads active in the last 14 days by default. On a busy hub it takes about 15 minutes; you can leave the page while it runs.
Daily Crawls
After the first crawl, BetaHub checks each connected game once a day, overnight (Central European Time). A daily crawl only reads threads with activity since the previous crawl, so it is much shorter than the first one.
You can also click Crawl now on the Steam Discussions page at any time. Only one crawl of a game runs at a time.
Thread Limit
Every thread a crawl reads is analysed by AI, so each crawl reads at most Max threads per crawl threads (200 by default, up to 500). Threads over the limit are not lost: they are saved and the next crawl reads them first.
When a crawl hits the limit:
- the Steam Discussions page shows how many threads wait for the next crawl, with a link to the setting;
- the project’s email digest mentions it in its Steam line.
If you see this every day, raise the limit so the backlog does not grow.
Settings
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Read back (days) | 14 | Window of the first crawl, up to 30 days. Sentiment only takes posts written inside it. |
| Max threads per crawl | 200 | Most threads one crawl reads, up to 500. |
| Skip pinned threads | On | Pinned threads are usually your own posts, such as patch notes. |
| Mentions needed to create a suggestion | 2 | A one-off wish waits on the Steam Discussions page until this many threads ask for the same thing. |
| Use post text for Sentiments | On | Lets Sentiments quote Steam posts in specific insights. With it off, only short key phrases are used. |
Where Results Appear
- Steam Discussions page: activity counts, latest bugs and suggestions, suggestions waiting for more mentions, and crawl history.
- Threads browser: every thread read, with its classification and what happened to it in BetaHub.
- Bugs and Suggestions: imported records, alongside records from other channels.
- Sentiments: one channel per Steam sub-forum. Insights and topics built from Steam posts have a See messages button that opens the posts behind them.
- Email digest: a single line such as “Steam discussions (Your Game): 3 new bugs, 1 new suggestion, 2 added to existing reports”, instead of one entry per imported record.
Correcting the Scanner
AI matching is not perfect. If a Steam thread was added to the wrong existing record, open the threads browser and click Unlink. The report becomes its own record. Unlinking a bug needs permission to merge bugs; unlinking a suggestion needs permission to moderate suggestions.
Disconnecting
Click Disconnect in the settings to stop reading the game. Everything already imported stays. You can reconnect later.
Troubleshooting
The page says Steam stopped answering. Steam sometimes refuses requests for a while. What was read before that is saved. Crawls pause until the next night, including Crawl now and connecting a new game, and then resume on their own.
A thread I expected is missing. Check the threads browser with the range set to all. The thread may be classified as neither bug nor suggestion, be pinned (and skipped), or still wait because a crawl hit its thread limit. A thread that fails to process is retried by the next crawls and left unclassified after three failures (failures while the AI service is down do not count).
Counts on the Steam Discussions page look low. Activity is counted by when threads were posted. Switch the range to 30 days to include older threads that were read recently.
See Also
- Advanced Features – AI-powered insights, automation, and analytics
- Bug Triage Queue – AI-powered pre-review queue for Discord bugs
- Managing Feedback – Triage and workflow best practices