Steam is the world’s hottest platform for PC video games and a bedrock of the trade. But in case you examine the Steam of immediately with, say, the Steam of ten years in the past, surprisingly little has modified. Or surprisingly little had modified, as a result of Steam simply launched considered one of its greatest updates in current reminiscence.

Valve has reworked the Steam shopper from the ground up, together with modifications to the framework underpinning your entire program. The person interface and in-game overlay had been revised, too, and a bunch of latest options had been added. Here’s what’s new after you replace Steam.

This article was translated from German to English, and initially appeared on pcwelt.de.

Revised framework: Steam will get new guts

The most vital innovation isn’t even seen to customers: Steam’s underlying framework has been revamped. The new Steam framework gives builders an atmosphere to entry instruments, libraries and extra. The enhancements are meant to make it simpler to share code between the desktop shopper, Big Picture mode, and Steam Deck. Among different issues, this makes it potential to ship most of the new options to the Steam Deck concurrently the primary shopper.

Steam’s new look

The change you’ll discover initially is the brand new person interface. Dialogue home windows, menus, colours, fonts – Valve has made quite a few modifications to Steam’s look. The primary construction stays largely the identical, however has been given a brand new coat of paint.

Valve

Completely new in-game overlay

The in-game overlay has been utterly overhauled and has been given a complete new look. A brand new utility has been added with Notes you may make for video games, and a toolbar now offers fast entry to all vital features.

Taking notes whereas enjoying

Thanks to Steam’s new cloud-based Notes feature talked about above, you’ll be capable to create notes whereas enjoying a sport that you may simply reference sooner or later, full with wealthy textual content formatting. The notes are saved individually for every sport and synchronized with all different PCs (or Steam Decks) you’re logged into. You can insert photographs as effectively, and create a number of notes per sport – even in offline mode.

Pinning overlay home windows

You can now pin particular person home windows from the overlay in order that they’re seen in your sport, even when the overlay is closed, as proven under.

Valve

This characteristic is on the market for notes, guides, discussions, achievements and Steam’s built-in internet browser. The transparency of the window will be freely adjusted as effectively.

Revamped sport overview, controller configurator, and Mac/Linux enhancements

The sport overview within the new Steam overlay gives lots of info now, comparable to your enjoying time within the present sport, achievement progress, and in style guides. Improvements have additionally been made to the controller configurator.

Valve’s huge replace additionally helps Mac and Linux customers. The revised framework now enables you to activate {hardware} acceleration for the macOS and Linux variations of Steam, reaching parity with the Windows model. Happy gaming!