Latest Steam Replace Is Fairly Good, Really

Steam is getting a brand new replace, and it’s bringing fairly helpful options to your PC video games to will let you do extra with out having to go away your sport.

The full replace isn’t dwell simply but however is on the market by way of the Steam Shopper Beta for testing. The largest change is Valve is overhauling the in-game overlay, which is able to now will let you use a number of options with out having to shut out your sport. There’s now a toolbar that permits you to entry a number of options as pop-up home windows, together with buddies chat, achievements progress, guides, discussions, and your browser. There may also be customization choices, which is able to allow you to decide and select which of those options you truly need to use. Don’t actually care about your achievements? Save that display screen house by eradicating it from the toolbar fully.

Whereas the toolbar can be customizable for as a lot or little info as you need to see, there’s additionally a Sport Overview, which Valve describes as a “one-stop store” for every sport in your library. It exhibits you issues like achievements, which buddies are additionally enjoying the sport, and directs you to information and guides on the sport in query, all accessible by way of a pop-up window. Most enjoyable for me is the Notes app, which is strictly what it feels like. That is an in-app place to jot down notes and to-do lists for a sport, which I’m positive will come in useful for the newest open-world hotness. You can too pin any of those to be seen when you’re enjoying, with customization choices for opacity and place.

Whereas most of those updates tie again into accessing options with out having to reduce your sport, there are just a few basic modifications additionally coming to Steam as a part of the replace. This contains smaller issues like streamlining the notifications menu solely to inform you when one thing new is queued up and permitting you to vary thumbnail sizes within the screenshot supervisor. In the mean time, there’s no date on when this replace can be out there for basic customers, should you’re utilizing Steam on Mac or Linux, Valve additionally says it’s enabled {hardware} acceleration for the launcher on these working methods. The brand new shopper is on the market for Linux customers now, although Mac customers should wait “a pair weeks” earlier than that replace is on the market.