Valve overhauls Steam user interface

By Robert Purchese Published 24 February, 2010

Beta open, feedback needed.

Valve has overhauled the Steam user interface and wants your feedback on the raft of changes made.

A public beta client is available to download right now.

The headline alterations include being able to see what friends have bought on Steam, a news aggregation feature and better library management. You can find a full and thorough dissection of the UI overhaul on the Steam website. Yes, there are pictures.

Steam experienced growth of 200 per cent in the last year and is now used by 25 million people. They pick from over 1000 games and collectively spend 12 billion minutes a month playing them.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (44) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • butler` #1 2 years ago

    Not like Valve to actually do something with steam. You can tell they're making some money. *Fond memories of the friends system not working for about 18months*

  • kestral #2 2 years ago

    cynics brigade is in early today :)

  • Ryboy #3 2 years ago

    Ooooh, I rather like it.

  • LiveForever #4 2 years ago

    Its about time.

  • ryn.x #5 2 years ago

    Works rather well from early inspections, a feature to give non steam games in your library a small background image instead of just the game Icon would be welcome as it just makes it look a bit 'non feng shui'.

    Currently 1,133,035 gamers online...quite impressive really.

  • McBradders #6 2 years ago

    The cynic brigade never sleeps. They are just waiting.

  • ignatiusjreilly #7 2 years ago

    I'm slightly concerned that my 80% of my gaming experience seems to revolve around Steam now, but it's so good that those concerns are pushed aside.

    It even converted at least two of my pirate friends into regular paying customers :)

  • hiddenranbir #8 2 years ago

    test shell error, can't seem to browse through it yet...shame.
    Edited by 2 at 24/02/10 @ 11:27

  • bad09 #9 2 years ago

    Just had a look. I like it.

  • Caimbeul #10 2 years ago

    looks nice, maybe they can sort out basic problems like games no launching and gifts sent actually being recieved by the recipients...4 weeks i have been trying to get the latter sorted. Steam customer services is very slow and very poor. they only know how to give scripted replies.

  • the_mtfr #11 2 years ago

    I'll start using Steam when it switches away from the Internet Explorer engine.

  • spekkeh #12 2 years ago

    The only update I'd like is one that makes it stop updating and shitting out ads all the freaking time.

  • cianchristopher #13 2 years ago

    Can't really see it 'til I get home this evening. Does the "grid view" for your games list look like iTunes or something?

    I love Steam, but they've a few shortcomings... Mainly, 3rd-party DRM on some of their titles, new patches not being applied to titles for some time (if at all) and a large number of UI errors* on their application (hopefully this will deal with that issue).

    *This includes: game titles being spelled incorrectly, titles not having their Metacritic scores shown on the "My Games" list despite being shown on the store-page, and missing developer info on the "My Games" list.

  • piopakk #14 2 years ago

    Well it seems they finally ditched the internet explorer engine. They are using the WebKit-engine now. This should make Steam more slim, faster and stable.

  • StooMonster #15 2 years ago

    Yep, it's gone all iTunes. Takes a few minutes to download 'album art' equivalents for each game (maybe it's really busy ATM).

    Looks nice though, even if it must have Web2.0rhea

  • butler` #16 2 years ago

    Don't get me wrong, it's looking rather good! They've just got a history of apathy.

  • StooMonster #17 2 years ago

    spekkeh: errr... you could turn it off. Don't need an update to do that.

    Steam | Settings | Interface | 'Notify me' tick box, turn it off.

  • Skurmedel #18 2 years ago

    I would've liked it to have Windows look-and-feel :( But this is definitely better than what was before.

  • X3Entente #19 2 years ago

    thanks VALVe, not get backto making HL2:Ep3

  • sargeant_samporridge #20 2 years ago

    just reading the patch notes it shows that the web browser is know using webkit instead of IE

    "Now using a WebKit based rendering engine for the client and in-game overlay web browsing components (replacing Internet Explorer)"

    http://store. steampowered.com/uiupdate/

  • videogangs #21 2 years ago

    @Raajaa

    Yup, change notes say they've switched to Webkit. Best rendering engine currently available imo. Can't wait to install this tonight, was chatting about how antiquated the old one was with a mate on my lunchbreak the other day.

  • oceanmotion #22 2 years ago

    Looks like the Zune software. That UI is popping up in quite a few things now. Windows Phone, Live Messenger.

  • videogangs #23 2 years ago

    @ignatiusjreilly

    I have to say I'm actually pretty elated that I find myself using Steam more and more. The overlay is great, stability is good to excellent, having all my friends in one place made my last LAN party a piece of piss, updates are automatic, download speeds excellent, the list goes on.

    I know some people hate the whole "single point of failure" aspect but what can I say, I manage a large network like this myself and I'm just not a massive pessimist :-)

  • dsmx #24 2 years ago

    IT's certainly better in pretty much everyway, there are a few things that need a bit of work from a usability point of view but on the whole it's really nice. I like the new library section a lot showing who owns that game, what achievements you've got and the ability to type in the name of the game to go to it on the list is really useful.

  • AphoticCosmos #25 2 years ago

    Looks lovely!

  • ignatiusjreilly #26 2 years ago

    I know some people hate the whole "single point of failure" aspect

    It's not so much the single point of failure that concerns me, it's more about the principle that strong competition usually encourages improvement.

    One company with too much power and influence is never a good thing. Luckily in this case that company is Valve, because I'd be a lot more concerned if it was MS (for example) running Steam.

  • roz123 #27 2 years ago

    The thing is Steam might be the leading PC game downloading service but its just as much fighting against piracy and the consoles as well as other similar services.

  • Shakey_Jake33 #28 2 years ago

    I think Valve run a good service, and most of the price cuts and special offers are the result of their discussions with publishers (and the success of mid-week and weekend deals give them a lot of ammunition in these discussions, giving massive sales spikes to games that are no longer selling well). Ultimately, it is the publisher who decides the price of a game, Valve can do little but negotiate.

    Direct2Drive are becoming much more popular recently, and have the upper hand in price on many games. I tend to stick to Steam because I feel it is more likely to be around in 10 years, but it's nice to see that it's not becoming a monopoly. Impulse are growing, too.

    Microsoft will have their hands full of they want to expand the GfW Marketplace beyond Live-enabled titles.

  • sneetch #29 2 years ago

    Looks mighty purdy!

  • lunnytoon #30 2 years ago

    Nice overhaul, much better than the old UI.

    For some reason though Steam has decided to re-download 7gig of MW2 Multiplayer when it was already installed on my system. Hope it keeps my progress.

    Also getting a few 'Testshell errors' when trying to look at things like Achievements, and checking which friends play a certain game.

    Overall a very welcome update in my eyes.
    Edited by 1 at 24/02/10 @ 12:44

  • FogHeart #31 2 years ago

    Now I can see what games my friends have, hopefully I can put a stop to the little popup that tells me 'This friend is playing this game that you don't have'. Inform my purchasing decisions when I'm purchasing, not playing.

  • the_mtfr #32 2 years ago

    Fucking annoying how me and Raajaa got so many thumbs up, being lazy bastards and just bitching about its IE engine. And sargeant_samporridge (thanks for the info man) who actually checked the whole feature list replied to us that indeed it changed to WebKit, got thumbed down massively.

    What the fuck, people?

  • Durandle #33 2 years ago

    Dropping of IE for WebKit - about sodding time! The was one of the most annoying parts of Steam.

  • Eraysor #34 2 years ago

    I went back to the original after trying it; it gets a bit cumbersome when you have 40+ games in your library.
    Edited by 1 at 24/02/10 @ 13:37

  • Spekingur #35 2 years ago

    @lunnytoon: Yeah, that happened to me as well. There have been a number of people reporting this but the reason is unclear. Some have reported it happening for L4D2 as well but those seem to be very few - so far. I am wondering weither it might have anything to do with originally installing the game from a backup or suchlike.

    @Eraysor: Cumbersome in what way? As in slow or interface gets "confusing"? There is an option for how to view the games, somewhat like in Windows (tiles, list, detailed).

  • Skurmedel #36 2 years ago

    the_mftr: Karma is a bitch! At least on Eurogamer.

  • Melan #37 2 years ago

    could not see any text, and i had trouble uninstalling it. Ended up deleting my steam folder (and i forgot to backup my steamapps folder), so at the moment im downloading 20+ games again. :D

  • dfunked #38 2 years ago

    I like it a lot!
    The game details screen is especially nice - no more trawling through awkward menus to see which achievements.
    Having your total time played staring you in the face every time you start a game is a little offputting though!

  • Spekingur #39 2 years ago

    I have only put in 156 hours into MW2 Multiplayer. Good value for money - even at its high price.

  • Lusterpurge #40 2 years ago

    "ERROR: Steam.exe (main exception): ERROR: deleted Steam.exe but the file is still there"

    Awesome. Now I can't play any games anymore.

  • oerhoert #41 2 years ago

    I don't get why you can't zoom down the tile view even further. Some of us own hundreds of games on Steam, and adding such an easy visual reward (for being crazy spenders) would be a good idea from a commercial point of view.

    The UI otherwise is promising, although there are some pretty major bugs. Not having text shown in any of the menus being the primary one.

  • fknetwork #42 2 years ago

    Looks as pants as ever, steam is a poor man's psn/live, always has been always will be.

  • Spekingur #43 2 years ago

    And yet, Steam came out before XBL and PSN - it drove what we now know as XBL on the X360 and XBL had immense effect on what is PSN today.

  • Shakey_Jake33 #44 2 years ago

    @fknetwork - I shouldn't bite, but in what ways are Live and PSN better as digital distribution services?