An anonymous reader shares a report: PC gamers could easily make a joke that three things in life never change: death, taxes, and the classic look of Steam. One of those things just changed, though; Valve just released the most substantial overhaul to Steam in years, including a visual makeover and several new features. Further, the company has brought the Mac and Linux versions of Steam closer to parity with the historically superior Windows version. Valve says “the most impactful changes” are actually under the hood. The company’s developers put effort into achieving greater consistency between how things work in Steam for desktop, the TV-oriented Big Picture mode, and Steam Deck. This codebase overhaul means that new features that come to the desktop version of Steam can simultaneously ship on Steam Deck with minimal effort.
As for stuff that’s visible to users, though, the entire application’s look has been overhauled and modernized. In most cases, things are more or less where they used to be in the interface — they just look a little different, with new fonts, colors, sizes, and so on. That said, the in-game overlay has received a more significant overhaul, as did notifications. Steam users have access to more customizations about how and when notifications are displayed, and the notifications panel displays only new notifications, with a “view all” button for digging into older ones. In general, the overlay has more information about the game you’re playing, from achievement progress to playing time and beyond. Valve has made big changes to the controller configurator from the Steam Deck, which is now part of the overlay whenever a game is connected.
