Love Steam? I do, and I'm sure a fair amount of PC gamers do to. Which makes hearing about how a good thing is getting better pretty great news. That's pretty much what's happening with Steam's new UI makeover.
What Valve's calling "A Brand New Steam" has just entered public beta, and anyone using the service can sign up to join it right here. Changes include a prettier storefront, better fonts, a nifty download tracker, and a revamped library that, among other things, displays which of your friends plays which games, the better to invite them to join you.
The new UI also brings Steam Achievements closer to the surface, listing your recent accomplishments on the in-game overlay and in your game library.
Perhaps the best news for lovers of multi-tasking is that the Steam client's built-in web browser is no longer based on Internet Explorer. Now you can check your email between loading screens! Well, check it more quickly, at any rate.
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Contest:
11:30 PM on 02.23.2010
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Is Steam really as awesome as it sounds?
This. It's a little detail I love of my Steam games. But hey, all of the rest is amazing.
Not loving the inability to download anything from Steam right now because everyone's downloading the beta ui! ;)
Want Gridrunners :(
Holy balls this is way better.
- Now using a WebKit based rendering engine for the client and in-game overlay web browsing components (replacing Internet Explorer
so basically chrome or safari.
You should just try it, it's quite small and if you don't like it you can just uninstall it. But trust me, if you have even $10 to spare you can pick up multiple games on Steam. They even have options to organize their games by price and they have constant awesome deals in a "Specials" tab.
Also, to everybody who is trying out the Beta and doesn't like certain things about it, please please PLEASE EMAIL VALVE AND GIVE THEM A REPORT! THIS IS WHAT THE BETA IS FOR!
I can't find a lot of my games.
For whatever reason, games like Borderlands, Ghost Master, Uplink, Darwinia and Torchlight aren't showing up on my Games List. Is there something I don't know about, or has the installation f*cked up?
I mostly buy games in a box as I have issues with Steam's account-based access model versus true ownership, but I do have Steam always on and use it to launch my games.