Steam Update Makes Big Changes to the User Interface

Feels like the Steam Deck gave them a boost in, I don't know if it's morale, creativity or something but it's there. Amazing little machine, I love it. And to see Steam's UI finally getting some much needed love and tweaks is fantastic.

MacOS getting a "no longer feels awful to use" update? Hell yeah. Even if I don't play on it, I like to have the client.

Notes especially looks to be a fantastic features. It's a simple thing and I could take notes anywhere. But having them in-game is another thing.

As always, Steam continues to be the best gaming platform ever. While others are just like: "Fuck you, this is where you must buy our games now", Steam provides valuable features that would make you want to buy it here over another place. Sure, I love the DRM-free nature of GOG but the work Valve keeps on putting in stuff like Proton and Linux makes me stick with them in the end.

I honestly love Steam. They did some mistakes in the past, sure, but they keep doing amazing stuff. They stand out in this industry of ridiculous greed and they've earned my trust, which is quite hard these days. And while I am always cautious, I think they'll keep it until the day Valve does a 180 and announce: "We're going public" and it'll be all downhill from there, as it always happen when great companies who make amazing products goes public.

I dread this moment but hopefully, it'll never happen. They're already swimming in money, so... Can't see why they'd do this. But still. I keep it in the back of my mind.

I worry that when Gabe Newell eventually retires or dies that some MBA shitheads will take over Steam and then it'll decline like so many other things lately :(
- I am prepared to pirate every single game I bought on that platform if that comes to happen =/
- Hopefully he has a good successor lined up. There's definitely people out there with that quality first mindset. Quality costs a lot, a poor product costs you everything. That's been beaten into my head my whole life by my father who is a recovered MBA goon with decades of experience watching the ebb and flow of many businesses in his little corner of the world (tools and fasteners).
Only thing I wish they would finally implement is the ability to prevent certain games from updating when modding them...
It's currently a real pain to deal with.

Like you I would love to use GOG more but Valve's contribution to gaming is just that much bigger.
- I noticed that that other day. I might be crazy, but I swear that it use to be a feature.
Same tbh, I don't want to see it but I think it's a hard pill to swallow that eventually it's gonna go down the same route other massive companies have. It is amazing it held up so well this far, probably thanks to Gaben himself.

My biggest fear is steam workshop tbh. So many games depend on it that it's become synonymous with modding for many users, which hurts games not on steam or mods not on the workshop. I know I'm preaching to the choir here but such massive centralization and monopolization can't be good. Especially since the steam workshop isn't even that good - it lacks many features that other mod portals or managers have, like version control, preset switching, virtual installs, or even something as simple as mass subscribe/unsubscribe or a sortable list.
- I don’t think we have anything to worry about with Steam. It’s privately held, so they aren’t bound by investors or shareholders squeezing them to wring out infinite growth and ROI every quarter
- Valve has a pretty unique flat structure that could protect them from a corporate buyout, even more if Gaben decides to transfer ownership into an employee trust and turn it into a full co-op when he leaves.
Totally agree.

There was a time when I would avoid Steam versions of games as much as I could because of the bad interface and frequent crashes, but they continued to improve the platform year after year until it became a model of what a games platform should be.

I'd still slightly prefer to buy on GoG due to it being DRM free but I recently got a Steam Deck so the ease of use begins to tip the equation in favour of Steam again.
Feels like the Steam Deck gave them a boost in, I don’t know if it’s morale, creativity or something but it’s there.

I'm soo excited for Counter Strike 2. Glad they're going full steam ahead with it after their vacation.

Man finally! It's been so bad on macOS for the longest time. Pages not loading correctly, buttons not working, keyboard shortcuts not working... Now everything seems to be working!

That all happened on Windows, too. I don't know how they let it go on like that for so long.

My friend had the audacity to say she thought it looked basically the same with a new font. I said, “Bitch, it’s been the same UI for god knows how long. It’s way different.”

Its the same design but with 2020 aesthetics instead of 2005 aesthetics

Oh right I forgot about the steam update to the nee UI, I hoped on the beta test and decided to keep it. I genuinely forgot that it was new because it was very intuitive.

It happened! I was waiting for so long, I almost lost hope :p. Can’t wait to test it out :).

Steam rejecting the rounded-corner asthetic that basically every program uses now is very funny to me. It really does look quite nice. Valve updating their dev pipelines to streamline the process is something they desperately needed to do.

I'm actually kind of excited for the notes feature. Having a place to save notes if I come back to a game way later (thanks backlog) to help catch up is great. Or just keeping track of things for puzzle/mystery games is handy

I’ve been running the beta version for a week or so and it’s been great so far. The notes feature made keeping track of things in System Shock and Shadows of Doubt much easier. The UI changes took a little getting used to but overall this feels like an improvement.

I was scared for a moment after reading the title, but that does actually look like an improvement.

Love the new overlay. And all the pages load so much noticeably faster, its great.
Wish the new News button next to notifications took you directly to your news instead of Steam only. Keeps my news 2 clicks away. Minor gripe.
And I still firmly believe the Controller Input redesign is outright bad, like no redeeming quality over classic. But It was previewed before this, so not really a knock on this update.

Now it's worse than Epic Store, since they removed the option so start minimized on the system trail

Edit. I'd prefer people telling me I am wrong, the option still exists somewhere rather that downvotes

Maybe there is no option in the settings (yet, maybe they will add it later), but you can still start steam minimized to system tray:
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/0188-6BB7-D467-08E1
- Thanks
  
  Maybe there is no option in the settings (yet, maybe they will add it later)
  
  The thing is, the option was on steam before, for decades, they removed it with this update, for some reason

I've been using it in the beta for a while. The new overlay is definitely the biggest improvement for me. Everything is snappier, and the new notes feature is nice. It initially didn't have the ability to show players in the same lobby as you like the old overlay (in games that supported it, like TF2). But they re-added it after some feedback.

This actually kinda sucks on Linux. Shit started blinking out of nowhere and wouldn't respect the chosen scaling options. I added a launch parameter to the .desktop file and that fixed it but it's so hacky and people have been reporting the problem on the beta github for months with no fixes. Also Adwaita For Steam skin is broken now and it doesn't look like the rest of my desktop anymore. That one's minor but still.

For me it's overall much better on Linux now.
Hm, this doesn't match my experience on PopOS. I haven't seen a single issue, and it looks quite nice.
- Me too, I have no problem at all on PopOs
- I used it in beta a little bit, reverted over minor issues that needed ironing out. Then there's my buddy, who spent hours trying to figure out what the hell was causing it to crash. He eventually figured it out though. For any poor soul who finds this comment looking for answers, sudo pacman -Rns xdg-desktop-portal-gtk fixed it for him.

Lovingit so far, but I'm getting some bugs, like I can't see my Wish list until I load another page (Like my Library) a lot of new features too!

I do like the look, but clicking on search results, or items on the store pages won't open up the page, it just keeps going to the homepage. Sure they'll fix that one quickly.

Seems pretty good actually

It looks good in my opinion. Haven't really messed around too much with it to find any major flaws though (if there are any).

Meh, I'm not too keen on the change from simple checkboxes for options to the toggle switch style. Even though they're functionally the same, the toggle switch just seems less intuitive.

They're trying for an unified interface for desktop, Steam Deck and phone clients. While I agree that toggles are less optimal for a mouse driven interface, they're much better for touch screens or gamepads.

Update seemed to broke my Xbox controller input inside any game (looked like it couldn't focus on the game window), even though it worked well in other applications. If anyone is experiencing this issue, exiting and re-launching Steam fixed it for me.

Has anyone found a way to prevent the web browser from reopening the last open tabs after closing/reopening it? I like to do quick Google searches with it but now I gotta open a new tab for that. Mild inconvenience, otherwise I like the changes!

Can't they fix the Mac version pretty pls.

Not a fan of the client not wanting to stay on my side monitor. Seems to always open on my main.