Steam, the PC giant of digital distribution, has finally released their newly designed chat feature. In a post on their website, Valve is introducing its users to the new and snazzy features, which remind us a bit of popular chat app Discord.
This new “Chat Update”, is nothing less than huge step for the Seattle-based gaming company, who is traditionally known for their slow working pace. But this is hardly a surprise release, since early adopters were able to test the new Steam Chat since June as a beta.
Today, this changes, as Valve is rolling out the new Steam Chat across all of its users. Valve is promising a richer chat experience, better friends list organization, making it easier and more fun to game with friends, which all sounds fine but you’ll have to try it out for yourself to see whether you like it. After all, adding more features necessitates a more busy user design, which could be to the dismay of chatting “purists”.
As one part of this update, the friends list has gotten more flexible, giving users drag-and-drop ease of usability in creating Group Chats or favouriting friends. Also, it will come as handy that friends who are online and playing, are grouped together according to the games they play. Aforementioned Group Chats also do play a bigger role now, as that tab is prominently featured in the friend list window.
While this all sounds like polishes rather than a reimagining, it is the actual chatting experience which has gotten a substantial boost into the modern age of social media interactivity. No longer are users bound to express themselves with Steam Emotes alone, as Tweets, images, videos, gifs and more will be embedded into the chat directly. Similarly to Discord, hm.
A fool who would think Valve is merely copying arguably the most popular chat client among gamers at the moment however, as Valve also implemented the feature to save groups and start “Channels” in said groups. And if you want to add new people into your Groups, just send them a nifty Invite Link! Does Discord do all that?! Ahem.
All jokes aside, yes, ever since the beta phase of Steam’s new chat redesign, people all over that internet have been accusing Valve of copying Discord. In the end, is that really a bad thing though? The Steam Client felt antiquated in certain aspects for a while now and gamers have sent a clear signal that what Discord is offering, is what they wish for.
On top of that, it’s not like Discord hasn’t been implementing new features we kind of know from Steam, too. We, the users, only benefit by companies trying to woo us in the end. So, all is good.
These new features are now available to every Steam user on both the dedicated Steam Client and in the web browser. Check it out!
