Steam is the online digital distribution and content delivery system from Valve which prides itself on its completely automated game update process and use of in-game functionality. Now Valve has announced a new and updated version of Steam immediately available in public beta.
A statement from the company says that in the last year Steam has grown by roughly 200 percent, and there are about 25 million users and over a thousand games on the platform. In order to accommodate growth such as this, a new Steam client has been created. The opt-in beta is available immediately to all Steam users. Existing Steam users can take part in the beta by adjusting their Steam settings, or preview the new Steam client without taking part in the beta.
“We made hundreds of changes to the Steam client as a result of customer feedback on the interface, performance, and functionality,” John Cook, Director of Steam Development at Valve said. “For example, we swapped out the Internet Explorer rendering engine with WebKit, which gives us a bunch of size, stability and performance benefits. This release of Steam leaves us well prepared for another year of strong growth.”
The new version of Steam lets gamers see which games their friends have purchased, allowing them to make decisions as to which games to purchase themselves. Also, news outlets can reach the Steam community via the new client’s News Aggregator functionality. The new client introduces library customisation tools helping gamers sort, group and find games. Another thing possible with the new release is tracking of all achievements in a standardized cross-game fashion.