There’s no denying that Valve is a major force in PC gaming. After all, the company singlehandedly revived the PC gaming market with Steam. Now it’s entering the gaming hardware and operating system markets, and it wants developers along for the ride.

Valve announced today that it will be hosting the first ever Steam Dev Days on January 15, 2014 in Seattle. The two-day event will give developers a chance to learn from each other and from Valve about how to best utilize the Steam platform for their games. As an added bonus, developers will also get a chance to check out some Steam Machine prototypes.

Here’s the official event description:

Steam Dev Days is a two-day game developer’s conference where professionals can meet in a relaxed, off the record environment. Developers will share their design and industry expertise, participate in roundtable discussions and attend lectures by industry veterans on topics ranging from game economies to VR, Linux/OpenGL, user-generated content and more. Developers will also have direct access to Valve’s Steam Team, and will be given a chance to test-drive and provide feedback on Steam OS, prototype Steam Machines and Steam Controllers.

You’ll notice that the above description mentions that Valve’s dev conference will be “off the record.” According to the official FAQ, that means no press is allowed at the event. It’s a decidedly different approach to other game developer conferences, like GDC, where the press is not only allowed in, but encouraged to report on the talks and roundtable discussions. Of course, this is Valve we’re talking about here. The company is pretty reclusive as far as the press is concerned, and it’s not surprising to see its developer conference go the same way.

If you’re a game developer and like the idea of Steam Dev Days, you can register for the conference today for $95. That’s an incredibly cheap price for a developer conference that promises to have a lot of great info for the game developer.

[Image: Valve]