Steam - Getting a New Library

[Silver]

DSOGaming reports that Steam will be getting a new look library.

At GDC 2019, Valve announced that Steam's library will get re-designed. Moreover, Valve aims to add advanced tag searches, as well as a new Steam Events page.

Some of the key features for the re-designed library are listed below.

• The friends list is now integrated into a right-hand column
• The top module shows recent games you've been playing with a library view reminiscent of Plex or the Apple TV
• The rest of your collection is shown with nice vertical thumbnails that can be scaled to show larger icons or more games
• The left-hand games list has a new look but is fairly similar to the existing design

[...]

More information.

 

[screeg]

The Steam interface needs to be burned right down to the ground and rebuilt, instead of making ad hoc improvements every few years. Right now it's some kind of tragic joke. Perhaps hiring a few UX designers might help?

 

[rjshae]

Well they've got to look like they're doing something with that 30% cut.

 

[joxer]

The steam interface needs only one thing - a halfscreen big button that when pressed removes "in-app purchases" titles from any visible list.

Instead of functions, Valve is trying to save the day with cosmetic changes.

 

[azarhal]

The Steam interface needs to be burned right down to the ground and rebuilt, instead of making ad hoc improvements every few years. Right now it's some kind of tragic joke. Perhaps hiring a few UX designers might help?

Have you looked at what the new UI looks like? PCGamer has screenshots.

 

[Deleted member 18181]

Looks full of useless crap; maybe there will be options to hide some stuff but i doubt it. Ive been perfectly happy for several years with pixelvision skin.

 

[screeg]

Looks full of useless crap; maybe there will be options to hide some stuff but i doubt it. Ive been perfectly happy for several years with pixelvision skin.

At a glance this looks cosmetic..? Steam's problems go WAYYY beyond that.

 

[abharsair]

Not sure if a new UI is really the right answer to Epic's exclusive titles.

 

[Couchpotato]

Not sure if a new UI is really the right answer to Epic's exclusive titles.

Well Epic will stop buying exclusives eventually. Except for a few games a year.

Link - https://www.pcgamer.com/epic-says-itll-eventually-stop-pushing-for-exclusives/

"I don't think we plan to [negotiate exclusives] forever," he said. "We'll probably do it for a while. It's just about pushing the business model, helping people thrive, but at some point hopefully people just come, or the industry moves down and matches us … I understand the sentiment about it, so I'm pretty sensitive to how I answer this question, but the answer is yes, at some point we could go to zero, or we could go to very, very few major exclusives in any given year. We will definitely not be doing it on the scale we're doing it on now for an extended period of time."

"We're trying to socialize a new financial model for developers that they can thrive on," said Allison earlier in the panel. "What happens is developers have some reasonable success, half-a-million units, that's a lot of units, but in a 70/30 situation, depending on their publishing situation, or maybe their cost structure, maybe they just survive when they should thrive. So we want to see them thrive, and the difference in the business model is substantial.

"We need to help people get there, and if we have someone who decides to go—from a business case perspective, they want to see what they can do for their business—if they go into five stores, four of which have a 70/30 business model and one that has 88/12, and their sales get spread around at any proportion, kind of less than 70 percent than their total sales, their going to get a blended result that is probably not going to change their minds in any way, shape, or form. We're trying to change the minds of our developers. The best way we can do that is have the majority or all of their sales happen here."

 

[Arkadia7]

At least steam seems to be finally waking up. This new look is an improvement. Finally they are allowing the games list as well as small icons for all your games. I just hope the game page itself is customizable. I don't want to see nor care about what stupid streamers are doing with games I own. These "events" are non-events to me, and not something I want to see on the game page.

 

[sakichop]

Meh, i was fine with the old one, but the new one will be fine too I’m sure. I rarely go to it anyway as i launch my games from icons on the desktop.

 

[Carnifex]

I'm fine with the current look on steam, but then again I was ok with the previous model as well.

 

[Zloth]

... maybe there will be options to hide some stuff but i doubt it...

Looks likely to me. What's that gear icon for if not to mess with what's there? Plus it looks VERY modular.

What I don't understand is how it takes them so long to develop. They've been hinting at this for a long time now and it still won't show up until summer! Maybe there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes? It really shouldn't take anywhere near that long to write a new library page and rewrite the game page.

 

[Ripper]

What I don't understand is how it takes them so long to develop.

I do - they needed a good kick up the arse.

 

[you]

I don't think the difficulty is effort to develop but rather the decision of what to develop. Many successful companies become a bit conservative because they have something that seems to work and there is always a concern that changes will be received negatively. Sure they could completely redo the design (and they probably have internally) but if people are basically ok with what is there a new design while addressing some people complaint might have a polarization impact on other people. These days a few dissatisfy folks can cause a lot of business damage.

What I don't understand is how it takes them so long to develop.

 

[ChaosTheory]

Will it finally be able to adapt to high-res monitors? Tired of squinting at Steam, while it only uses 25% of my screen real estate...

 

[GuybrushWilco]

I recently checked out the Epic Game Store for the first time, and it really makes me appreciate the effort that Valve puts into features for Steam. We kind of take tags, sorting options, detailed game description pages, community forums, etc for granted. EGS is extremely bare bones and not very useful for anything outside of just purchasing the games, which is why I hope Valve gets its act together and announces Half-Life 2 or something. I would hate if it a crappy platform like EGS became dominate just be cause they bought up a bunch of exclusives.

 

[Zloth]

I would hate if it a crappy platform like EGS became dominate just be cause they bought up a bunch of exclusives.

Me too - though, if they were to become dominant because they did those things better, I would be QUITE happy! There's certainly plenty of room for improvement, too. For instance, when I go through a screenshot list, the system often pops the same shot up two or even three times. That's been a bug for at least a DECADE now!

 

[HiddenX]

Henriquejr spotted some pictures at PC Gamer.