(Image credit: Valve) Sometimes it feels like you have to open a half-dozen applications before you start playing a game. You've gotta open Steam, launch a game, make sure your streaming app is working (everyone streams these days), and then start chatting with friends in something like TeamSpeak or Discord. Valve hopes to have removed that last step, at least, by updating Steam Chat with so many features it might as well be a new service. These updates to Steam Chat were released in beta form back in June. Now they're available to all Steam users, whether it's via the Steam app or the web, and Valve said it's also begun work on a Steam Chat app for iPhone and Android devices. It almost seems like the company is quietly hoping to become the central hub of PC gamers' lives, rather than merely being a place where they buy a bunch of games they might never play. That means Valve is going to have to convince people to use Steam Chat instead of TeamSpeak, Discord, and similar platforms. (With Discord likely being the frontrunner when it comes to constant interaction rather than just in-game communication.) To that end, the new Steam Chat includes new group chats that offer in-line media, the ability to invite people with a link, and the option to make multiple text and voice channels. Let's get this out of the way: As we said in our coverage of the new Steam Chat beta, yes, these new group chats make it seem like someone at Valve opened Discord and just changed a few things around to fit in with Steam's existing design, and that's probably going to be many Discord users' immediate reactions to these new group chats. But the updates to Steam Chats don't stop with group chats. There's also a new friends list that lets you see your buds organized by what game they're playing, whether or not they're playing together, and if they're a member of any of your group chats. A new "rich presence" tool lets devs show exactly what your friends are doing in their game, too, and improvements have been made to call quality and the platform's security. Will this be enough to convince people to use Steam Chat instead of other platforms? Maybe. But it's hard to move between platforms, and many people have already filled Discord servers with messages, channels, and memes they would have to give up by starting over with Steam Chat. People also like to play games that aren't on Steam--surprise!--and they are probably used to using something like Discord for those games.<doc-sep>Steam rolled out a sleek new update that totally revamps the chat experience. While old Steam chat was adequate (albeit clunky), more robust platforms such as Discord took over the gaming chat experience. But Steam has been working on improved chat platform and released a beta version on June 12. This week, Steam Chat officially moved out of beta and is now available to all users. There’s a lot that Steam Chat has in common with Discord — the ability to create text and voice channels and a simple link invite to group chats, for instance — but those are also features pretty standard across modern chat applications, such as Slack. Other perks of Steam Chat include a more dynamic friends list, which gives users the ability to group friends by game and party, as well as pick favorites. The chat also supports in-line videos, embeds and most importantly, GIFs. Group chats can be saved for later with custom avatars and titles. Plus, new and improved Steam Chat just looks much nicer compared to the old one. The new and improved Steam Chat, meanwhile, is lookin’ sharp. The updated friends list makes things easier to navigate and organize. Pick your favorite friends! Fancy new Steam Chat is available on the Steam web browser too, so check it out and start pinging your friends with cat GIFs today.<doc-sep>The new and vastly improved Steam chat client that Valve rolled into beta testing in June, with support for group chats, multiple channels, voice chat support, and inline multimedia, is now fully operational and live for everyone. The new Steam chat is a big step forward, not least because it looks and acts like Discord, the current king of the game-centric chat client ring. Persistent group chats are "built for gaming," as players can see which of their regular cohorts are online, invite them to a voice channel, and then fire out some game invites. There's also a web-based option, so if you can't (or don't want to) fire up Steam, you can still participate in your communities through your browser. The release version of the Steam chat client boasts a number of changes and fixes since the beta, and Valve said that it will pave the way to future Steam updates. "Friends and chat are just the beginning. This update was built using a new UI framework and includes some important architectural improvements under the hood, all of which allow us to make more frequent updates to our web-based Steam components," it wrote. "There are many improvements to the overall Steam experience that we plan to tackle, and your feedback helps us to prioritize what's next."<doc-sep>
Steam’s modernised chat update is out of beta, available for all to use. The new Steam chat UI went into beta in June, shortly after a leak on a Russian forum. If you’re unaware, Steam’s new chat UI takes a lot of inspiration from Discord, both in design and functionality. On top of the better laid-out UI, Steam’s friends window is more flexible, allowing for group chats, grouping by games, and voice chat all within the same window. In particular, group chats now work similarly to Discord’s server chats, with the ability to embed GIFs, videos, and seamlessly transition between text and voice channels. The main advantage here being that your games are likely already on Steam, so you’re able to join friends in progress, particularly when the game uses Steam matchmaking. Rich Presence is another new addition, greatly enhancing the information shown about the games your friends are playing such as mode type, party size etc. Groups can be saved and returned to whenever, the same way you can do so today with many chat platforms. The biggest new addition, however, is that all of this is available through the browser as well as the Steam client. You’re able to send group links for others to join in, and they don’t need to have Steam installed. It really is a big leap forward. “Friends and chat are just the beginning,” Valve said. “This update was built using a new UI framework and includes some important architectural improvements under the hood, all of which allow us to make more frequent updates to our web-based Steam components. “There are many improvements to the overall Steam experience that we plan to tackle, and your feedback helps us to prioritise what’s next.” Your Steam client should have already been updated. If not, manually check for updates through the Steam menu in the main window.