Steam Sports Fest is live now! All week long you'll find discounts, demos, and more in the wide world of sports-themed games.

And we do mean "wide world" in the widest possible way: You'll find games that feature the more traditional sports like basketball, soccer, football, and hockey; AND you'll find games that feature parkour, aerial snow stunts, wacky golf, exploding balls, and more.

Join us on Steam from now until May 22nd at 10am PT for Steam Sports Fest!

Hello!

A couple weeks ago, we shipped a hefty update to the Steam Client Beta, with new features including an updated in-game overlay, a new game notes feature, and updated notifications. (Details and pretty pictures about this update can be found here)

We've been gathering feedback and making updates, and as we get closer to shipping we could use more testing and coverage from you to make sure nothing is overlooked.

We're introducing a [url]one-click opt-in[/url], to make it easy for you to try out all the new features and provide feedback. Once the features ship to everyone on Steam, your client will be updated to the latest public version available (automatically ending your participation in this beta.)

[url]
Click here to try out the updated Steam Client[/url]

This beta will be updated frequently in response to your feedback. Speaking of which - please provide your feedback: in the forums.


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If you've already opted into the Beta and have been providing feedback, thank you so much - your feedback has been invaluable!

The team has been hard at work responding to your feedback, making fixes, adjustments, and improvements to Steam. There have already been 7 updates over the last few weeks, including:

• Added spell check toggle and cloud sync status to game notes
  
• Added a find-in-page functionality to the web browser
  
• Added soundtrack controls to library and quick access menu
  
• Updates and fixes to the controller configurator
  
• Updates and fixes to the Players dialog
  
• A large hill of bug fixes
  
• A medium-sized hill of visual fixes and improvements

Curious to see what else has changed? You can find a list of all patch notes and updates to the Steam Client Beta here.

Beginning today, you’ll see we’ve made some updates to Steam's Rules and Guidelines and Steam's Online Conduct Rules.

These updates are intended to add context and specificity to how we already apply these in practice to all behaviors and content across Steam.

You can read both in their entirety here:

• Online Conduct Rules
• Rules and Guidelines for Steam

We've just rolled out an update to the Steam store search to make it easier to explore more of the games available on Steam and find what you're looking for.

We noticed more players searching for particular store hubs, tags, or developers so we've updated Steam to handle those destinations. Lets take a quick look at all the recent search updates:

Released today, the auto-suggestion drop-down that appears when you start typing into the main search field in the Steam store will now return tags, developers, publishers, and franchises if there are reasonable matches. You can search for categories like "Free to play" or individual tags like "survival" or "zombies".



Looking for a particular developer or publisher on Steam? Excited about a specific gaming franchise? Now those appear in the quick search results too.



Looking for "Bethesda" games? Or perhaps you want to browse all the "Star Wars" or "Final Fantasy" games. Now you can!


We've also recently updated the search suggestions to better handle typing mistakes or misspelled words.



These improvements are also part of the Steam Mobile App (and the Steam website when viewed on mobile devices). To learn more about the Steam Mobile App, check out: https://store.steampowered.com/mobile


Check out the updated search functionality today by simply starting a search from the store search bar.

Hello! We’ve just updated the Steam Client Beta with new features and improvements to the Steam Desktop experience. We’re excited to get these features into your hands for testing, so please check it out and let us know what you think. Here's a quick overview of what's new:



Some of the biggest changes in this update aren’t immediately visible; much of the work went into changing how we share code across the Steam Desktop Client, Big Picture mode, and Steam Deck. These changes also mean a quicker implementation and iteration of new features. One example of this is the new Local Network Transfer update, which shipped simultaneously in the Steam Client and Steam Deck.

This update also brings targeted visual and usability improvements across Steam - we've gone through and updated dialogs, menus, fonts, and colors. The main Steam header, Settings, and the game server browser are just a few examples of spots with refreshed UI.

We’ve overhauled the In-Game Overlay completely. Originally created to be a quick way to chat with friends or check on game-related questions or content, we’ve built a brand-new user interface, adding new utility and allowing for more customizability.



The new toolbar gives you access to anything you may need in the middle of a game – friends chat, achievements progress, guides, discussions, a browser, and more. We've picked a couple windows by default, and you can pick and personalize the pieces of content you’d like to see in your overlay - settings are saved between games. This toolbar can be switched between an icon view and a list view in Settings.



The Game Overview is your one-stop shop to see what’s going on with the game since you last played it. For example, it shows what achievements you have in progress, which friends are playing the same game, top guides, news, and more.



The new Notes app lets you jot down... notes about the game that you’re currently playing. It comes with rich text formatting, the ability to have multiple notes per game, and can even be used in offline mode. These notes are saved per game and are synced across to any other PCs you are logged into, and are also accessible outside the in-game overlay, on the game details page.



We've also added the ability to pin windows from the overlay, so that they can appear on top of the game while in-game. Opacity level is adjustable, and only the contents of the window will be pinned - excluding the title bar and other extraneous UI. This new functionality is available for Notes, Guides, Discussions, and the web browser (yes, you can watch movies while you play games if you really want to).



Steam Client notifications are now richer and more useful. The green button only lights up when there's truly something new for you. The tray view is limited to new notifications, and there's a "View all" page with a historical view.



The screenshot manager has been completely refreshed - it's responsive, you can choose from large or small thumbnails, view recent screenshots rather than by game, and you can manage online screenshots as well as local screenshots.



The technical work in this update also makes it possible to enable hardware acceleration for the Mac & Linux versions of Steam, bringing them up to par with Windows. You should see snappier animations, scrolling and more responsive UI. Linux users can try the new client out today! For Mac users, you will have to wait a couple weeks as we are hard at work getting the client ready for public testing.

These features are all now available in the Steam Client Beta, which you can opt into by following these instructions. Work on these features is ongoing, and we would love to hear what you think. Any feedback and bug reports are appreciated – please share them in the forums.

General

• Added "End of Life" alert for Windows 7/8/8.1. Steam Client support for these operating systems will end on Jan 1st, 2024 at 10am. See here for additional details.
  
• Fixed crash when clicking links in Compatibility Mode alert dialogs
  
• Reduced CPU usage of the Big Picture Mode window

macOS

• Added "End of Life" alert for macOS 10.11 ("El Capitan") and 10.12 ("Sierra"). Steam Client support for these operating systems will end on September 1st, 2023 at 10am. See here for additional details.
  
• Fixed Steam Overlay crash in some games using Metal graphics API

This client was re-released on May 30th to address the following issue:

• Fixed an issue in the library causing the game released section to accidentally display for users who added the Street Fighter 6 demo to their account. This section of the library should only display when a game that you have pre-purchased is ready for pre-load or has released and is now ready to play.

Steam Puzzle Fest is live now, celebrating puzzle games of all kinds for an entire week! From now through May 1st at 10am PDT, come find discounts, demos, and more on games (both current and upcoming) built around solving puzzles.

Bring your best problem-solving skills to break the code, find the missing piece, and align the elements as you explore this showcase of games focused on the spirit of solving puzzles. Head HERE to join in the action!