The Steam client is finally getting a makeover this year after many years of the same old interface.
With modern tech changing how we perceive and expect how our technology to look like in terms of UI, it’s no surprise that the world’s largest DRM platform is making some changes. With functions being icons, everything hidden, and a super minimalistic approach with tons of white space dominating the interwebs, apps, and everything else, Steam has decided to make changes too.
Valve talked about some of the biggest achievements they accomplished last year in 2018 and what they want to do in 2019. Steam’s proudest achievement is probably the 47M active daily users and 90M monthly active users they’ve managed to enlist.
They’re also expanding Steam servers in a few different ways going into the future by rebuilding Steam’s infrastructure that powers the game searches, reviews, and workshops. The Steam library will also get an update which will make it similar to the new Steam Chat released in 2018. Other than that, we don’t know much else. Perhaps this will make them function similarly and match each other in terms of aesthetics.
Steam Chat was particularly successful but was criticized for pretty much ripping-off Discord’s setup and UI for the chat. There’s going to be a mobile release of the chat service later on.
Steam TV, which is Steam’s streaming platform, will be expanded to support more games. It’s currently functioning pretty well, but even with 47M daily users, only a small percentage of them actually use the service. Perhaps Steam needs to promote the streaming component a little harder if they ever hope to compete with Twitch.
Steam Community pages will also get new features like Events which lets users feature specials occurrences for games. Steam Trust, which is currently used in CS: GO will become available to all games this year. The tech was used to block hackers and should help other developers make their games much more secure.
Lastly, Steam will launch in China and annouced a deal with Perfect World to let them become an official player in the country. Steam PC Cafe will also expand across the globe.
Lots of fun things planned for Steam this year. Even with their terrible developer split, the platform still is dominating the industry and doesn’t seem to be running out of steam anytime soon.
Source: Steam.
Writer and journalist for almost a year. Doing this for fun. Learned a lot along the way. I’m interested in businesses and the moves they make, tech and how it changes the world, and of course, enjoy playing some video games! I enjoy console and PC, but mostly RPGs, FPS, and League of Legends.