Steam Store Upcoming Release Calendar Scraper
Steam Store Upcoming Release Calendar Scraper
Scrapes Steam's complete coming-soon catalog into a release calendar with normalised date strings. Returns upcoming game metadata including release dates parsed from fuzzy strings (e.g. "Q3 2026", "May 2026"), developers, publishers, genres, tags, platforms, and pricing.
What it does
Steam uses inconsistent date strings for upcoming games: full dates ("May 21, 2026"), month-year ("May 2026"), year-only ("2026"), quarter ("Q3 2026"), and fuzzy labels ("Coming soon", "TBA"). This actor normalises all of them to ISO-compatible forms so you can sort, filter, and track release-date slips over time.
The actor runs a two-stage pipeline:
- Catalog collection — Paginates Steam's coming-soon search API to collect all upcoming app IDs and their tag associations (~11,000+ titles at any given time).
- Detail enrichment — Fetches the Steam AppDetails API for each game to retrieve full metadata: developers, publishers, genres, pricing, platforms, and the canonical release date.
Output
Each record in the dataset contains:
| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
steam_appid |
integer | Steam application ID |
name |
string | Game title |
release_date_raw |
string | Original Steam date string (e.g. "Q3 2026", "May 21, 2026") |
release_date_parsed |
string | Normalised date: YYYY-MM-DD, YYYY-MM, YYYY, YYYY-Qn, or null |
is_coming_soon |
boolean | Steam's own coming_soon flag |
announced |
boolean | True when is_coming_soon=true but no parseable date |
developers |
string | Comma-separated developer studio names |
publishers |
string | Comma-separated publisher names |
genres |
string | Comma-separated genre labels |
tags |
string | Comma-separated Steam tag IDs |
price_planned |
number | Planned price in USD (null if not yet priced) |
early_access |
boolean | Whether the game launches in Early Access |
platforms |
string | Comma-separated platforms (windows, mac, linux) |
has_demo |
boolean | Demo availability flag |
header_image |
string | URL to the Steam capsule image |
short_description |
string | Short description from Steam |
source_url |
string | Steam store page URL |
snapshot_ts |
string | ISO timestamp of when this record was scraped |
Date normalisation
| Steam string | Parsed value |
|---|---|
| "May 21, 2026" | "2026-05-21" |
| "May 2026" | "2026-05" |
| "2026" | "2026" |
| "Q3 2026" | "2026-Q3" |
| "Coming soon" | null |
| "TBA", "TBD", "" | null |
Input
| Parameter | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
maxItems |
integer | 10 | Maximum number of records to return. Leave blank for the full catalog. |
Use cases
- Games media and editorial — build a "games releasing this month/quarter" calendar
- Release date tracking — run periodically and diff against previous results to detect date slips
- Affiliate and content sites — surface upcoming games with dates, genres, and pricing
- Market research — analyse upcoming release density by platform, genre, or time window
Rate limiting
Steam's AppDetails API allows approximately 200 requests per 5 minutes per IP. The actor respects this with built-in throttling. Full catalog runs (10,000+ titles) take several hours. Use maxItems to scrape a targeted subset.
Notes
price_plannedis null for most upcoming games until Steam opens pre-purchases.- Early Access detection uses Steam's category system (category ID 70).
- Tag IDs are numeric Steam tag codes; cross-reference the Steam tag database for labels.