A new and quite interesting Steam Client Beta is out, nice Linux fixes and Vulkan shader downloading

Valve put out a brand new Steam Client Beta yesterday and it sounds like a pretty good one, with Linux issues getting some more attention.

Firstly though, they've re-named In-Home Streaming to Steam Remote Play, since the Steam client can now stream games to any other client both inside and outside your home. Additionally, your paired Steam Link devices will now show up in the Remote Play settings and you can remove all paired Steam Link devices.

The next interesting bit is for Vulkan, as Valve have re-worked their shader system so it's capable of downloading and pre-compiling the whole collection of Vulkan pipelines for games. So we will now see shader data downloads in Steam and pre-compiling will be enabled in a "future Beta build". This is exciting, hopefully when this is fully enabled, it will make Vulkan games super smooth for both native and Steam Play.

The Linux client also saw some nice attention, with a fix included for Steam randomly crashing when launching games, something I saw every week. They also fixed a bug that recently gained some renewed attention, where you couldn't copy/move files bigger than 2GB. They've improved the Steam Client's responsivness to networking changes, a fix is included for Risk of Rain and other GameMaker titles due to a libcurl issue. Valve also added the ability to remove old Proton versions by "aliasing them to more recent ones" and they added support for "developers and Valve testing specifying default Proton configuration options for games even if they're not yet white-listed".

For those who had trouble with games like Forager, Chronicon and The Swords of Ditto do give this new beta a try and see if they now run for you. They're all GameMaker titles that had the noted issue above, so hopefully the experience is now better.

Lastly, there's a few Steam Input changes and the Steam Overlay also had a few fixes.

Full changelog can be found here.

Ps. Valve also sent word early this morning that the Steam Link application is now available for iOS and Apple TV users.