Years of waiting has finally paid off. The Steam library has launched with a new redesigned look to it. We have had rumors one after the other that this would be happening but were always left short handed-until now that is. It is a fresh look and redesign and is now the default for everyone not just those who are opted in into the Steam Beta. The library has a modern look to it with a new home-page that comes as a new feature for all of us that have become used to the old Steam design.
What is still the same? Well the side-bar on the left with a list of all our games is still thankfully there. That was always my favorite part of the Steam UI. Compared to other launchers, Steam has always had the best UI for our games giving us the largest amount of titles in the simplest best way to show it. Even GOG falls short as their left side games list cannot fit in nearly as many games. For those with long scrolling libraries especially this is a big deal. The big parts of Steam are still the same. You have your achievements, your trading cards, friends list, storefront, wishlist, etc. All of these are the same.
What has changed for the better is the interface giving us a new home-page to land on when we open up steam. On that page we see updates for our games at the top which is a nice new touch. Now we don't have to go to the update page for each game in our library we can simply go to our home page. This saves a lot of time. Below that is recent games, then favorites, then friends activity, and then below that is a long list of your library in tile format. If you prefer say your friends activity at the top you can drag and rearrange the order of these to your liking. The tiles showing the games we have can also be modified with custom artwork. We can upload a picture we like or stick with the one the developer has chosen for the game. Unfortunately a lot of games have artwork that is not sized correctly to the game tile. This is up to the developer to create a game cover that is sized appropriately. If you don't like the mismatched size you can also upload your own artwork.
When you click on a game in your library you will notice that the page has been redesigned as well. No longer is it simply a start game button with a few links at the right hand side. At the very top you will notice artwork for your game and on that artwork is a green play button. Along with your hours played, last time played, and the number of achievements you've completed. Below this header is a line of links to the store, community hub, guides, discussion, workshop, etc. Below this you will find a post game summary. Each time you play and accomplish various achievements in the game, or take screenshots in the game this section will change to accommodate that. You will find that the trading cards are also presented in a new fashion. Hovering over a trading card will make the card hover a bit over your cursor. The achievements have also changed. Rare or under 10% achievements are now presented as a beaming light shining around the achievement. A perfect 100% achievement completion in a game is presented with a blue ribbon signifying your accomplishment.
You can now click and drag your games into categories that you make. There is also a page below the home page that says "Collections" where you have all your categories such as "action games, roguelikes, RPG games, Achievement games, etc"
Overall the new redesign has been a much needed change to the old looking design that has gotten stale over the years. It has been a long time since the design has changed this much. This has surely been the biggest design change in the history of Steam. A lot of the more heavy CPU design changes can be set or turned off in settings if you so desire. It is nice of Steam to include that feature to say disable the new game updates from showing. However it would have been better if Steam had jumped in with both feet and spent the development time on new features rather then including those settings to appease the people who don't like all the new changes with the new redesign. There are a few features that i have personally wanted for a long time. The biggest of which is a notepad. Having an integrated Steam Notepad would be amazing to have. So many Steam users and game enthusiasts already use a notepad or journal either on their computer or on paper to write down gaming notes. Having a shorter more convenient method would be great for those games that really need a notepad. And there are a lot that do better with a notepad then without one. Games such as Binding of Isaac, or other roguelikes where you have to remember what each item does or what item combinations do for example. If you haven't written it down then you have to go out of your way to find the wiki and look it up. It is far easier to write each item down and have the handy reference with you. A Steam integrated notebook would be a very convenient and much needed addition to the new Steam library. Another redesign that is needed is this : a sound for unlocking an achievement. Currently we only have the text pop up in the corner of the game we are playing. I and many people have asked for Steam to play a sound when you get an achievement. Xbox and Playstation both have sounds when you get achievements and Xbox even has gamerscore. These are all things that are metagame but do motivate people to keep playing their games and therefore stay on the given platform.
Hopefully Steam listens and implements a few of these suggestions. Anyways Steam is still king on the PC and hopefully will be for the foreseeable future. Epic and Uplay are nowhere near Steam in terms of features and support. Gog is the best competitor as it offers a good looking platform, good support and DRM-free. However Steam has the user base, and features outperforming even GOG.
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