News

Steam Gets A Makeover With All-New UI, New Open Beta

11:40AM February 24, 2010 | Michael McWhertor

Valve has revealed its plans for a brand new version of Steam, its digital distribution and social networking service. And it’s letting Steam users test its long list of new features out, starting today.

The visual and functional update to Steam includes an expanded Friends List, letting players keep closer tabs on what their Steam buddies are playing, and an aggregated news feed, helping PC gamers stay informed without having to visit fancy web sites or RSS readers for their video game news fix.

There are also sharp looking UI improvements, both for the Steam client and the game overlays, plus some great “Library Wrangling”. The custom categories one can apply to one’s Steam game library does sound nice, Valve. Thanks.

If you want to opt-in to the public beta (which may be experiencing some birthing pains right now) you can do so from within your current version of Steam. Hit up Valve’s official Steam site to learn more and see the new UI in pretty pictures.

A Brand New Steam [Steam]

Comments

  • El Phantasmogoro

    February 24, 2010 at 12:47 PM

    Thank god. One thing Steam has always needed was a nicer UI and some none ugly colour schemes. Other than that, the system is pretty good. This will hopefully make steam more attractive to look at and nicer to use.

  • Gumby

    February 24, 2010 at 1:06 PM

    Just installed it right then.
    WOW….
    Loving the new dl manager and custom game pages.
    Little overwhelming actually, but i think i know where everything is after 3 mins of using it.

    1 thing though, it wants me to dl a 7gig update for COD MW2 MP after installing the beta UI.
    Anyone else getting that?

    • Joe Mama

      February 24, 2010 at 5:35 PM

      It’s a bug and it’s not an update. Steam is wanting you to reinstall your entire game because it’s stupid atm.

  • Akbar and/or Jeff

    February 24, 2010 at 1:22 PM

    It’s a bit of a disappointment that download scheduling still isn’t included, but at least my eyes will have something pretty to look at while they’re crying out for sleep at 2am in the morning when off-peak time finally kicks in.

    • Chuloopa

      February 24, 2010 at 2:18 PM

      You, Sir, need IINET. Steam is part of their free zone so anything you download isn’t counted as part of your download limit -squeee- :D

      • Harlequiine

        February 24, 2010 at 3:56 PM

        That’s actually wrong, iinet doesn’t have freezone for STEAM itself, but only for the Australian downloads.. can’t remember what they’re called. But sometimes for whatever reason you’ll be downloading somewhere else, quite often when I download a game from steam about 75% is freezone and 25% is offpeak.. still a pain, but better than nothing.

        • Andrew Cruise

          February 24, 2010 at 4:21 PM

          get a program called steamwatch, basicaly it stops steam from connecting to anything but the internode and game arena servers, so nothing counts to your cap, not everythings available on those servers tho.. and steam has issues if u leave it running besides when your downloading games… but i used it just after the christmas specials to download 150gb of new games in a month all uncapped, saved me allot of hassles

  • Korwin

    February 24, 2010 at 1:46 PM

    Hmmm yeah I would hope for a scheduled option to be included at a later date, maybe it can be suggested in beta feedback.

  • Dunnowhathuh

    February 24, 2010 at 1:56 PM

    A more pretty UI is always welcome. Looking forward to it.

    @Jeff, use a task scheduler. Those things help a heck of a lot when you have to be up early the next day. Windows has one or if you prefer something more third party, Freebyte task sheduler works fine.

  • Cameron

    February 24, 2010 at 2:19 PM

    Urgh, when will they let us actually schedule and chose where we download games from????? Do they not realise that downloading 10gb of games actually damages your download allowance for the month, or do they just not care about Australians???

    I realise that you can hack away with schedulers and IP lists and firewalls/blocks ect to achieve this, but really, is it so hard just to give a list of where to download each game from, and a time to download it?

    • Lyndon

      February 24, 2010 at 6:35 PM

      10 gb hurts your quota?!?

      That’s only 1/12 of my monthly. Time for you to upgrade your plan I think :)

  • Louie Song

    February 24, 2010 at 3:37 PM

    This update is bugged and makes us redownload games and loses friends on our friends list..

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