The latest Steam Beta Client is out with Valve's revamped chat interface, along with some minor UI work as well.
Here's how the new interface and settings look, which is quite a lot cleaner and it does certainly look a lot more modern that's for sure. Steam's chat system was probably one of the oldest parts of Steam, so it's good to see a renewed focus on improving it.
The new favourites section is interesting, giving you a section to plonk people in you regularly chat with.
And here's how glorious the actual chat is, so I can send you all hilarious memes:
They updated the Group Chat feature as well, to be a lot more like Discord. You can add additional text and voice channels to them, including the rich image stuff like shown above. Group Chats can be given a name and avatar to save them as well, to pick it back up later.
Another benefit, is that it seems to finally keep some chat history too. I've closed and re-opened multiple chats, closed Steam itself and I still see what has been said.
There's additional handy features have been added too, like right clicking a game in your friends list and being able to go right to the store page:
However, it looks like this update has broken group chat for Steam Groups (like our Steam Group), as Steam will complain it can't find Steam running (as amusing as that is). In the shot below you will see that bug in action, plus the slightly different UI in the top right and bottom right.
To get around that issue, you can join the Group Chat from the Steam website, which then saves it into your Group Chat section of your friends list. I'm sure they will solve that weird issue soon. So the actual Group Chat interface now looks like this (very Discord-like):
You can join our very own GamingOnLinux Group Chat using this link, if you're bothered about it…
Another nice thing about the update, is that chats are finally tabbed together. You don't have many windows just for chat, all nicely under one roof now. To me, that's much nicer.
They've also completely rewritten voice chat from within Steam as well, with a WebRTC-based backend. It uses Opus encoding, encryption and the voice chat now goes through Steam directly, instead of being peer 2 peer. This should hopefully fix the issues where you couldn't connect to your friends to voice chat. It also now only requires a single click to voice chat with someone, although, that feature only works if your friend is also in the Steam Client Beta.
In addition, a feature I'm very happy about, is the new invisible mode. This allows you to show as offline, but still actually act is if you're online. For someone with as many people on their list as me from various tournaments and so in, it's a lot less hassle.
All of this works in the webstore too, not just the client. There's more I've likely missed, so do see the full details on their special update page here.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Doc Angelo Jun 13, 2018
Quoting: devnullSteam friends and Steam DRM are entirely different things though. If I'm not logged into Friends / chat, it a conscious descsion. I don't care about "achievements" in games either, thus don't log in.
DRM, achievements and chat have indeed nothing in common, except the connection to the account. Anyway, as long as you are logged into your account with the Steam client, all those things are available to you. The chat status "offline" was really just badly worded until now. There is no reason to be online in Steam and being "offline" in the chat at the same time, so there is no reason to implement some kind of split status for different things.
As long as you are able to appear offline to others, all is fine. What would be nice however would be the option that the friends window doesn't open itself automatically, like it was before. For people who don't need it every time.
Doc Angelo Jun 13, 2018
Quoting: devnullOne of the reasons to stag logged out of friends, is security. There were exploits against trading for example where people could send an offer and even if you didn't click on it, they could get your IP. In effect it pings your client.
Do you have a source for that? I don't think this is possible.
Quoting: devnullOne of the reasons to stag logged out of friends, is security. There were exploits against trading for example where people could send an offer and even if you didn't click on it, they could get your IP. In effect it pings your client.That's probably the reason they stated that chats were now relayed trough Steam servers and not p2p anymore.
Valve has some serious questions to answer if any of that has changed (yeah I know, good luck with that).
Doc Angelo Jun 15, 2018
Quoting: devnullIndeed. p2p should always be an option though. The issues with voice and trading are signaling, requiring an active connection to steam is silly.
You can't have p2p without giving away your IP to those chatting with you.
Quoting: Doc AngeloThat's okay though if you trust the people you chat with. So I guess it could work as an option.Quoting: devnullIndeed. p2p should always be an option though. The issues with voice and trading are signaling, requiring an active connection to steam is silly.
You can't have p2p without giving away your IP to those chatting with you.
Quoting: tuubiYes, and then the whole point of protecting the users IP is gone. It's easy to imagine someone turning on p2p, forgetting about it, accepting an invite from someone, accepting or joining a call...Quoting: Doc AngeloThat's okay though if you trust the people you chat with. So I guess it could work as an option.Quoting: devnullIndeed. p2p should always be an option though. The issues with voice and trading are signaling, requiring an active connection to steam is silly.
You can't have p2p without giving away your IP to those chatting with you.
Quoting: noxThat particular problem would be one of UI design. The user should not be allowed to "forget about" something important. But Valve isn't likely to consider this worth their time, so this is getting a bit academic.Quoting: tuubiYes, and then the whole point of protecting the users IP is gone. It's easy to imagine someone turning on p2p, forgetting about it, accepting an invite from someone, accepting or joining a call...Quoting: Doc AngeloThat's okay though if you trust the people you chat with. So I guess it could work as an option.Quoting: devnullIndeed. p2p should always be an option though. The issues with voice and trading are signaling, requiring an active connection to steam is silly.
You can't have p2p without giving away your IP to those chatting with you.
Thing is, valve likely wants to make sure that they aren't the reason why IP addresses are being leaked, regardless of how dumb users are. If people want p2p voice chat there are many other alternatives out there that would resolve that, which would give you the choice and take potential blame away from valve.
Quoting: noxThing is, valve likely wants to make sure that they aren't the reason why IP addresses are being leaked, regardless of how dumb users are.Oh yes, the Apple / lowest common denominator school of software design: Every user is an idiot, and if they aren't, they probably didn't want to do anything "advanced" anyway.
The hypothetical problem you describe could be solved with a single disclaimer and a safe default.
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