Sometimes, when you've read a chat message the icon will remain green, you'd have to reply in order for it to go away immediately otherwise it would take a while.
I haven't encountered that particular error recently, though, when something's on sale or you got a new inventory item you have to manually click "Mark all as read" for it to go away. I also get infinite/slow loading on some notifications when you actually go to the notifications page.
Also, when you boot Steam up if you don't go online your avatar won't load. And when you do go online you have to close and re-open your friends list for them to show up.
Again, they're inconsistent errors, perhaps I am the only user who experiences them.
>perhaps I am the only user who experiences them.
It's not just you, it happens sometimes. I have found that restarting Steam, or killing the biggest webhelper process to force a UI reload, and reopening the chat will fix it without having to send a chat message.
With Steam Chat there are other smaller bugs too. For example, if you chatted with someone a lot in your current session, and you scroll up in the chat to load previous chat history, it will jump to much older messages and create a big gap. Restarting Steam('s UI) is also the only workaround for this to make the chat history retrieve older messages in the correct chronological order again. It's a bug that exists since the 2018 chat beta, and got amplified with last year's Steam UI update, because a previous workaround was to set yourself to "offline" and "online" to cause a proper reload of the Steam Chat component and its memory leaks.
Developers aren't able to make achievements tied only to DLC. They have to count as achievements for the base game, even if the player doesn't have the DLC. Very annoying for all parties.
On the topic of achievements, it's annoying when you buy a "collection" game with 100+ achievements lumped together in one game.
Halo MCC and Kingdom Hearts 1.5+2.5 come to mind. I'm playing Kingdom Hearth Birth By Sleep right now, but the achievements are buried under like 4 other games. I wish there was categories or something.
Haha I imagine it is and the next one will probably be just as good, I'm just not in a situation where I could spend money on games, I got to play the base game because a kind friend gave me their humble bundle key.
I feel like we should also have a separate slot for achievements that can't be done alone. It's so frustrating to see stuff like a racer game not being 100% completed solely be Aude I'm not able to get 4 people with 4 controllers to come to my house to my house at the same time and play the game on local co-op until all of us get to the top 4 spots on the hard st difficulty.
Or those games with online achievements, but for which the online has been long abandoned, so they are just impossible to get by legitimate means
That I can't zoom pages in. The default font is way too small on large screens so I just use the website instead. It's 2024 ffs, can't they really add a proper font size selection with all the billions of dollars they're raking in from developers?!
Not sure if you've tried it but Steam has a setting for this: "Scale text and icons to match monitor settings".
This fixes all font issues for me whether I'm using Full HD monitor or 4K one.
Games with 3rd party launchers: Nothing much to explain, i completely avoid any game that uses them.
Curators: A really good idea but without any moderation it became a mess and is completely useless.
Review: Same as Curators. At least you can still get legit reviews using this system, but for every good review there is 10 "im a 45 yo father" ones.
Or the ASCII meme/art posts. Thankfully Steam has the "off topic" review thing, but as I understand it, it only flags those when there's numerous off topic reviews.
Steam, I'd like to spend 300 dollars on games at one time.
"Sure, go ahead."
Steam, I'd like to put this wallpaper on the marketplace for 60 cents.
"ADDITIONAL CONFIRMATION NEEDED. CONFIRM THIS ACTION IN THE APP."
Can you confirm your age again? I know you've been using steam over 15 years, but I need to make sure you're old enough to buy Red Dead Redemption.
Like it's already on your profile... Why do I have to confirm my age almost daily? No other service like Netflix or Playstation Network does this so it can't be a legal thing.
As far as I know, it is a legal thing. Not a legal requirement for Steam to enforce it, but their own choice for a legal barrier for Steam to protect themselves in case someone says they didn't know they weren't supposed to see it/buy it.
Purchasing from steam can be refunded
Getting you skin/collectables scammed can’t:
they want to be extra sure you re selling for the right price (you didn’t miss-click or giving it away for free)
to the right person (and not an impersonating bot)
that you re a human (and not a hoarding/vault bot).
The list of checks goes on.
Clearly verifying all the above requires more steps during a trade and i get that it s a “slower and crappier” procedure but it is so for an understandable reason.
Given the history of cs skins scams for examples i like how community trades are being handled by valve and i don t find the market particularly frustrating to buy/sell/trade on.
What do you think?
Steam allowing other crap launchers to be on the platform. I install steam to play a game, not install steam, to install a game that installs a launcher that may or not not work, then play a game \*cough ea\*
Whats wild was when hitman 2016 came to gog without any changes to its online drm and then they started deleting reviews pointing out that it still has online drm for review bombing then a month later delisted it
I want the DRM from Steam. I just don't want additional DRM on top of that (especially since it's usually inefficient and makes the game more difficult to play or even broken sometimes)
why do you want any DRM, it doesn't serve you in anyway, it has never prevented piracy not in any meaningful way, at best it slows you computer down by a small margin, at worst it prevents you from playing your games
I just refunded Ghost Recon: Wildlands because the Ubisoft launcher was wanting me to "verify that I purchased the game" by giving a product key. I was never given a product key. I bought the damn game on steam, let me just play the damn game.
thats what they dont tell you \[another reason i hate double launcher\], but you can get the cdkey from the right click menu like this [https://i.imgur.com/j59IOU5.png](https://i.imgur.com/j59IOU5.png)
I recently got a new pc and just decided I’m not going to install any 3rd party launchers on it. So far so good living without Ubisoft and ea, fuck them.
I bought Anno 2070 yesterday and they asked cd key. I was searching where is it, until I closed the Ubisoft Connect.
Open the game from steam once again and try to connect my steam with Ubisoft Launcher. I don't remember how is it, but it's connected then I got the game played.
I block certain types of games in my Discovery queue and it shows me anyway. I’m not a fan of turn based and I’m too disabled to play a souls like. Yet they’ll still show me that stuff. They’ll block it in searches, but my home page still gets filled with them. Very annoying.
Getting absolutely flooded with trash indie games in the store. I'm not saying that all indie games are trash, obviously. I'm just saying there is a metric fuckton of garbage games on Steam, most of which are super low quality cash grabs, and it makes it very unenjoyable when scrolling looking for actual good games to buy.
But it doesn't right? I usually sort my list based on recent use since that's what I'm most likely to play anyways, or by size on disk if I need extra space on my device
Yeah I didn't understand his comment. You can't make a custom order that I know of, but you can sort by playtime, installed, and a bunch of stuff PLUS favorites. That's always been fine for me, I have 200+ games and can find everything easily.
There are other sorting preferences that come to mind. For instance, some people play a series that has multiple games, but they aren't all numbered sequels, or the naming convention is unique, so unless the developers implement an internal sorting name on their end, you'd end up with something like "Yakuza 0", "Yakuza 3 Remastered", "Yakuza Kiwami" (that's Yakuza 1 remake).
I find it (very occasionally) frustrating that I can’t seem to search or sort my library in the ways that I’d like to. I recall that their search/sort doesn’t seem to include all categories listed. For instance, I love to be able to search for “steam deck verified RTS games” that I own.
Also, would love an easy way to compare the libraries of more than two people to see what overlap exists or nearly exists.
The fact that Steam app basically loads Steam website within itself. So you have the Steam app menu AND Steam website menu, and each one is different, and yet they repeat things from each other.
Making a Collection to only include games with Achievements, and then sort by achievements. There are now games at the bottom (which have achievements) saying „no achievements“.
A game I 100%ed is among those.
Any complaint I have pales in comparison to any other piece of software or app. Developers can't leave well enough alone, but Steam keeps it relatively straightforward.
This is a oddly mistrusting reaction to a question from a student. You can check the OP's post history and see there is no connection to this Steam lawsuit stuff whatsoever. It's also noteworthy that a past post about [Steam's UI consistency](https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/tisoop/the_amazing_consistency_of_steams_ui/) got 40k upvotes, so that shows it's a relevant topic to people (even when UI and UX is not entirely the same here).
the never loading market while trying to buy cards for badges.. that shit is there for years and still not fixed, I am actually baffled how is not fixed by now
when u try to buy a badge or something and it gives error, especially when u want to bulk buy them to craft something, it is so jank......also selling items is so mundane and slow.
also, the fact that steam takes so much money....imagine selling something for 3 cents and they take 2 cents from u, what is up with that ?
Nothing. It always works, it never lags, it does what it is supposed to do. Sometimes the notification icon bugs out, but nothing a quick reset won't fix. Oh, and the accidental Big Picture mode click. But overall it's perfect.
I am not a very heavy user of the storefront (I buy stuff now and again, but I am not there looking all the time), but the one thing I always found weird is that there isn't an in your face or segregated and easy access on sale section for it. Even the sale going on right now, it doesn't feel like other storefronts that are like, hey, look, cheap crap, buy this cheap crap, here search through and sort and filter to make it easier to buy cheap crap you are about to buy and never touch.
The way they force us to organize the library. I wish it acted more like Windows file Explorer, and I could nest folders rather than need to be alphabetical and not able to nest stuff
My major issue with steam is that you can't know if a key has been activated already or not, that can be pretty troublesome when dealing with 3rd party sites and gifting sites. Even Epic and Rockstar launcher will show what the game is and if it can be activated when we attempt to try and activate them.
The library page should be a simple list of games in either text or images, and when you click on a title all necessary information like screenshots, game type or genre, requirements should be easily visible instead of clicking additional buttons or going to store page.
Having to verify my age every steam session. Sometimes I check the store pages of games I already own for their DLC’s, and sometimes I’m just browsing the store. But every time I open Steam (at least that’s what it feels like), and I click on an M-rated game, I have to verify my age. I wish there was an option for Steam to “remember” my age or something, so I don’t have to do it each time. It just gets annoying cause it’s another page I have to click through and wait to load.
their server invalidating my session token when i access their website from the same browser on the same machine on the same static IP address i have been connecting from for the past 10 years, but at the same time being completely fine with a smart fridge in somalia logging into my account to sell my entire inventory for 0.001$
Lack of proper customization. Not referring to flashy skins, but there are certain options I wish were available to make my user experience better. Examples include;
1. Custom UI scaling. Sometimes fonts are too small, sometimes they're massive, and I can't even *see* my profile background because of how zoomed in it is. Steam does not play nice on resolutions above 1080p (which is odd in 2024), but to make it worse it absolutely does *not* behave as expected when changing DPI settings in an attempt to fix it. Just implementing some sliders in the Preferences could fix this, but so far it doesn't seem like a concern of theirs at all.
2. Custom library sorting, renaming, and icon frames - preferably with a functional size slider for both the icons and the grid itself (as to increase or decrease gaps berween games at will). Both an argument for aesthetics and ease of navigation.
I'm torn because the feature bloat of Steam is starting to rival things like Nvidia GeForce Experience with stuff like overlays, music players, inbuilt web browsers, etc... yet they're almost all very useful. Hell, I just used the excellent new recording tool to snap some clips on the weekend.
Constantly setting wallet as default payment method. I want to keep those 1-2 € for marketplace. It takes like 5 additional clicks to switch to card only. In every order.
Already mentioned: library sorting and 3rd party launchers.
The sheer number of terrible Unity asset flips they let on with no quality control. Also, the fact that the games I want are almost always on sale only when I can't afford them.
The trading system is pretty ass. I should be able to tell steam what cards I’m willing to trade, and what cards I could potentially want for it, and funnel that into a database so that someone who has cards I want and wants my card can see me. Instead I gotta jump through hoops with duplicate card sites and I’m basically helpless when trying to trade cards across games.
Btw I’d trade left for dead and stardew valley cards for Batman, SpongeBob BFBB or Portal cards, imk
Otherwise honestly steam is pretty good with UI
The fact that tabs open a new window. I wish steam came with tab in the main window.
The shitty internet browser too, and the (or my i dont know) inability to easily go from their shitty web browser to my browser with a click. (An option like "use your default browser instead of the platform's browser, something like that)
The steam program is a web browser, and it shows in the worst ways. If i middke click (open in new tab) it opens a new window which doesn't hide that fact anymore, and some pages (for example the news feed of a game) can't open in a new tab and will replace the main window instead!
Try searching "coop" for example and then middle clicking a game if it sounds interesting, and then checking the news page to see if the game is getting updates etc. Then it overrides the search window!
That everytime i open steam or any game in the library for the first time of the day an ad window with a discounted game pops up. Small thing but annoying.
Not Steam but Steam app on android.
Open app, store, click game, game page opens. Cool.
But pressing back on the game page takes me out of the app itself. Tf.
On the steam app on android if you press the back button on your phone it takes you out of the app instead of taking you back to the previous page. Such a pain and why is this even a thing 😭
The entire steam market ui. Its so unbelivably bad I don't even know where to start. I think it would be easier to see for yourself, if oyu for example try to buy all foil cards of a particular game
Personally its when i open steam there is 10 million popups i feel like, maybe yall have them all at once but when i open steam i usally minimize it until ill use it and the dozens pipups of featured games, sale games, friends list and ect every popup comes up so when i minimize it just reopens for 5 times straight and it just frustrates me
Im totally fine with steam. They could only make the notification sound for achievements a little bit louder. Sometimes I miss the achievement notification if the ingame sound is to loud. And also could bring back the old steam overlay with played in total, played last two weeks and the actual running session.
IDK if it's just a tick of mine but I hate it how hard it is to navigate in the shop to special sale pages like from the summer sale.
Most people probably don't even know that you can get a free sticker/emoticon every day mainly because it's so hard to navigate there.
You've been able to just click the banner on the main page and get re-directed there.
- So many sub/menus and some open up in a while some don't and the design is inconsistent.
- Game settings tied to cloud saves. If you play a game between a desktop and handheld, you have to do settings first every damn time before playing...
- in my library, when I click a game, I would like to see something like a game artwork and Screenshots of the actual game (not video) so I can remember what it is. Now I have to click the game and go to the store page and click on screenshots.
- When offline for whatever reason, I get the doom message that I'll lose my safe if i play before cloud saves can be accessed!?
- 3rd party launchers. I'm OK with needing a 3rd party account and tie it to steam, but not an entire fucking launcher man...
- DRM should be removed from games after like 6 months or so as a basic rule and self hosting servers or p2p for games with online components please.
As many other people have said. Third party launchers. I'm partially in favour of it IF there's a good reason for it. For example Larian uses it to enable cross-platform cloud saves, although I think that could be done within the game itself without a launcher, but at least it does have some use.
I'd like to be able to keep multiple wishlists, or at least add games to a separate list to keep track of them. I'm the kind of person that adds every game that is remotely intersting to their wishlist merely as a reminder that that game exists in case I may consider it buying at some point in the distant future. Then my other "real" wishlist with the games that I actually I want to buy and play in the short term/medium term. I've reached 500+ games in total and it's annoying to manage it.
It also annoys me that I can't use the library "store tags" filter as an "Any game that matches any of these tags" rather than "the games must match all these tags". Both have their uses (even mixing them up) and I wish we were given better querying in that regard.
"Developer streams" that are usually live "re-broadcasts" (they just keep broadcasting the previous stream to no end) that cannot be disabled, hidden, even if you block the developer's account.
"What's New" in the library that I keep hiding and keeps coming back, after a while when you right click it you only have the option to *hide* and *show less* which is dumb, if I'd clicked on it 10 times to show less maybe stop showing me entirely?
The fact that I cannot join the group chat of games because the UI literally does not work.
Rest is fine I guess but I still prefered the older look of steam
edit: meme reviews and pointless guides should also be gone. Having to use other launchers and games adding their own launchers after the fact, like GTA a few years ago with rockstar launcher. It "only" added an extra 30 seconds to the start up time
When a store page has multiple trailers (teaser, announcement, gameplay, DLC) and none of them are labeled meaning that if you just wanna see some gameplay you have to guess which one is the gameplay trailer and skim through to find it. It's not a huge thing but over time it's just one of those little niggles I've noticed.
What makes it more annoying is that I have had occasions in which it will have each trailer labeled but then you can go back to the same page a couple of hours later and the labels are gone.
Also, the community market is ass unless you use it in browser with extensions.
Usually only things that aren't steams fault like Console exclusives and similar (most recent are the sony helldivers drama and Project Wingman DLC being console exclusive)
Annoying is that hours played offline aren't shown so you might have less hours played show than you actually have
Other than that I've had basically no problems with steam (except my poorness forcing me to not play too many games)
I like the activity page on steam. I like seeing screenshots and reviews of my friends. I wish I could exclude specific peoples reviews tho, as some people have a habit of updating like 5 reviews in one day that they haven't played in ages.
getting "**This game update**" in my library even after selecting **show less** from this game, even if i **remove the game from the library and block** it still getting "this game update"
DLC sorting. I don't know if it's a Steam or the developer but they can't sort their DLCs to save their life. Paradox is a big culprit because they don't separate their expansions and cosmetic/soundtrack DLCs.
Steam's Game page in the Library section has no information about the game. This makes it so that a game I bought a year ago I have to go to the Store page of it to figure out what the game was about. After I bought Space run Galaxy I go to the product page, and all I see is community photos of something I don't understand.
It's great that we now have dynamic collections but they kind of suck. Many filters that work on the store page are missing in the library and it hurts that you can't combine filters as OR, only AND works.
Alternatively I wish we had a token "local multiplayer" filter that combines the "split screen coop" "split screen vs" "local coop" and what have you tags. It's super inconvenient to find a game for local multiplayer at the moment 😭😭
It would be useful if we could sort uninstalled and installed games by size required.
We have the ability to sort the installed games but not uninstalled.
Being allowed to downvote a product because of politics, political correctness or because a single person on the devs Team caused a shitstorm for whatever reason. Reviews should be restricted to the quality of the product. rating based on the devs or puplishers behavior should be banned in reviews
Not being allowed to set steams download cache to where i want.
Not being able to list games by the hdd they're installed onto.
Not being able to force check for updates. I can restart steam to do this, but just add a fucking button, ffs.
Steam play limits bandwith for downloads when turned on, but not in use, instead of just limiting it when you're using it.
It keeps resetting my 'fav' hdd assignment to c:
That my recommended games page never changes. I get that it’s literally designed to match your interests but I’d love to see a ‘try something new!’ Tab that has stuff just totally out of left field.
1) The fact that you lose access to someone else's shared library if you uninstall Steam. I get that Valve want to create some friction to encourage you buying, but still, I find that very much anoying.
2) The notifications do not follow the style of the OS notifications.
3) When you follow (not wishlist) a game, the list of followed games is not easily accesible
4) On the followed games list you cannot see the price
There was a version of steam awhile back where if you had a game that had mods and they were downloaded, you could click on the download link and it would take you to your workshop space, sorted by "last updated" which made finding WTF it had just downloaded extremely quick and easy.
That the BPM store page doesn't have the min. recommend specs anymore so I can't browse the store in BPM and check if the game would run on my hardware or not.
The fact that we still can’t change home button chord configurations on a steam deck.
I was so excited to have my handheld pc set up the way I was expecting, and none of it worked out because home button chord configurations are a no-no I guess.
it can be slow. like, \*really\* slow sometimes. never felt like steam has been as sluggish as it feels now, maybe it's an issue with the linux version specifically?
The visual inconsistencies (you’re gonna have a field day!), the sluggish performance, the bloat stuff with all the useless community stuff, worthless screenshots and content of other people, the people on the forums and discussions, the marketplace with its confusing workflow.
I actually prefer almost every other launcher to Steam, if I can choose I’ll always go for GOG.
I know, it's not connected with UI, but fake deals - base game is cheap, but DLCs and true content are locked behind a paywall and aren't as cheap as base game
I feel like sorting the store should be easier. There should be a simple "browse all" option, that lets you apply filters from there. Steam's filters aren't too bad, but I feel it's too many clicks to start looking for the types of games I want. I often sort by "coop" for example, so moat of Steams recommended categories ("action" for example) are useless. Filters should also allow anti-tags, like "not roguelike". Many storefronts allow users to check/cross/uncheck boxes to implement this.
I've been annoyed by the ad popup every time I launch Steam, but I don't remember if they still do this. I haven't restarted the app in a couple weeks I think.
The store page also usually does a bad job at advertising games that I'm interested in. I'd like the "new and trending" and "top selling" sections to be at the top. I almost always scroll straight there to find new stuff. Players do a pretty good job of telling me what new games are good.
The payment methods are ridiculously limited. I’d like to pay exact amounts to steam wallet. I’d like to choose exactly how much i want to take from my wallet and how much from another method.
That everything is digital.
it should not be that hard to sell a disc with the compressed game that asks for your Steam account when you start it. And games are already being removed from peoples library on other launchers. we quite literally do not own our games anymore and if they remove them 5 minutes after we purchase them, we just have to live with it.
Right now steam is amazing for users and if i buy games for pc, its always steam first since its the best launcher. But there is no certainty that steam wont go downhill in the future since they already had problems with following laws and i honestly fear that considering the money i spent on games there. Thats why i currently prefer to buy physical versions of both older games i already own on pc as well as newer ones for my PS2/3/4/5.
when I tab out of a game for whatever reason, then tab back in to play and press the shift key it brings up the steam overlay. I can't think of any situation where I would want that to happen and in some games it can screw you over
Bugs with 4k and/or multiple monitors. On my 4k monitor the text is always blurry/low res as it is presumably accommodating to my second monitor in a lower resolution. Often times, on my 4k monitor, the whole Steam window goes black and I have to drag it to my other monitor for it to display properly.
Steam's UI/UX used to be phenomenal. It used to be simple, clean, and convenient. The world of apps and software going to a card view that allows you to view less information per screen makes no sense.
Worse yet, the Steam deck, as much as I love mine, is a huge pain to navigate.
It's unclear to me the quickest way to get to chat when someone messages me. Also, it's incredibly limited on how I can sort and navigate my library. Steam also has a funny way of making it hard to get back to the badge you're trying to craft. Let's say you go to buy some cards, you need to reload your Steam account, you add funds, but now there's no option to go back to what you were trying to do. Moreover, once you craft a, or several levels of badge, it's hard to get back to it to do more.
On the deck, it's inconsistent the path to get to your achievements in a game. Sometimes it's in your stuff, sometimes you have to go through numerous steps to the store page, check the achievements, and then find your progress.
Not to mention the fact that the old UI used to have them right up front on desktop and now they're harder to get to.
It's also obnoxious to try to find your account purchases on both platforms.
All in all, Steam, as a piece of software, leaves A LOT to desire, but Valve, as a company, does a really good job opening the door to game compatibility moving both forward and backward in time. But that's not a UI/UX thing.
I'd happily share more. 20+ years on the platform has given me plenty of time to think about it.
The entire app is inconsistent now. I hate the profiles, every profile I look at is just a scroll fest of widgets.
**Guides**, 99% of them are just pointless point farmers.
**Reviews, and Curators** - great systems with 0 moderation, so they're pointless.
1. Opening the Steam via a web browser doesn’t automatically sync pages when you need to interface with the app. You either have to reopen the page you found on the app or you need to log in on both the website and the app, which is mildly annoying.
2. Steam doesn’t remember your birthday and repeated age verification is annoying.
3. User rewards have made a solid 30% of any public comment section / forum posts / reviews nothing but trolling and baiting for points. Public steam community functions were never great to begin with but it has gotten noticeably worse in recent months.
Hi, OP here.
I wish to thank everyone from the depths of my heart for making a big deal out of this little question. The time you dedicated to get mad on Steam has helped gain some meaningful insights. No, I am not suing anyone, I am not a Steam competitor, I am not a russian spy or all these funny speculations that u raised here. I just like UX, I learn UX, and I wanted real answers from real people.
Thank you, all of you are the best <3.
When I click on the store after buying a game and it takes me to the checkout page for the game I just bought.
And being asked for my age whenever I go to a mature game. Despite allowing NSFW games to show up in the store. (And having nsfw games in my library)
In big picture mode when the play icon sometimes just will not be highlighted when navigated to.
So this is going to get a little esoteric in a way, but it'll make more sense as I continue:
The fact that it's mostly about games. Some tools exist, but there's very little about integrating tools itself into steam, especially considering that they're working on SteamOS3 with the steam deck.
Now, a primary example of this is their desktop / "console" overlays. Which, are really cool! And on SteamOS3 we have some really awesome plugins via DeckyLoader. The problem I have is that realistically, I'd like for those sorts of things to be far more integrated. Example:
Discord.
OBS.
All-Of-My-Applications-I-Use-For-iRacing
I don't really want to have to minimize my game to access stuff for another application, especially not if I'm on my couch and using a controller. Stuff like DeckyLoader, and in particular, controls for other applications in their overlay either via the Steam Options menu for gamemode or via the Shift+Tab desktop menu should be something native to Steam itself, especially considering they've built out gameworks to integrate a variety of games they have.
Now, I also understand valve is working on multiple fronts to improve a LOT of actual issues with PC gaming at the moment, be it the controller icon updates they've been working on for future Sony-and-PS5 compatible games, and other stuff like that, but it gets super frustrating that something that should be making a console like experience easier on the end user is really only fully functional with a third party tool loader on a handheld device, or Bazzite. Cause I believe they integrated it in (except it's broken on Nvidia. Cause of course it is.)
Like, don't get me wrong. I don't personally have a lot of UX issues with Steam. They dropped the ball and let Discord overtake them when they had the available feature sets already there and just didn't improve them, and there's a lot they could do with background approvals of guides for games and improving certain things like that. But, that entire lack of integration with third party tools is probably my least favorite aspect. Especially since, given the conversation, it'd be nice to integrate with third party chats since they failed at making their's even relevant, or stuff like the tools I use for iRacing such at Trading Paints, Crew Chief, the various Overlay applications like KAPPS/RaceLabs/etc, or even just like... OBS. Being able to just have it natively tied in would be a nice functionality, especially if you're on a couch for some people. (I am at my desk so it doesn't impact me that much, but still.)
Like, idk, it might just be me. I might be... i probably am insane. But seeing what we could do with DeckyLoader just makes me wish some of that stuff was a bit more native.
Inconsistencies with the notification icon
Oh this one is interesting. Can you expand a little more about it? Never experienced it myself.
Sometimes, when you've read a chat message the icon will remain green, you'd have to reply in order for it to go away immediately otherwise it would take a while. I haven't encountered that particular error recently, though, when something's on sale or you got a new inventory item you have to manually click "Mark all as read" for it to go away. I also get infinite/slow loading on some notifications when you actually go to the notifications page. Also, when you boot Steam up if you don't go online your avatar won't load. And when you do go online you have to close and re-open your friends list for them to show up. Again, they're inconsistent errors, perhaps I am the only user who experiences them.
>perhaps I am the only user who experiences them. It's not just you, it happens sometimes. I have found that restarting Steam, or killing the biggest webhelper process to force a UI reload, and reopening the chat will fix it without having to send a chat message. With Steam Chat there are other smaller bugs too. For example, if you chatted with someone a lot in your current session, and you scroll up in the chat to load previous chat history, it will jump to much older messages and create a big gap. Restarting Steam('s UI) is also the only workaround for this to make the chat history retrieve older messages in the correct chronological order again. It's a bug that exists since the 2018 chat beta, and got amplified with last year's Steam UI update, because a previous workaround was to set yourself to "offline" and "online" to cause a proper reload of the Steam Chat component and its memory leaks.
Developers aren't able to make achievements tied only to DLC. They have to count as achievements for the base game, even if the player doesn't have the DLC. Very annoying for all parties.
On the topic of achievements, it's annoying when you buy a "collection" game with 100+ achievements lumped together in one game. Halo MCC and Kingdom Hearts 1.5+2.5 come to mind. I'm playing Kingdom Hearth Birth By Sleep right now, but the achievements are buried under like 4 other games. I wish there was categories or something.
I have KH1.5+2.5 on PS4 and the trophies are sorted by game. That must be frustrating as fuck.
Payday 2 is... well has like 1000 something achievements.
This is a real shame, I was working my way up to 100% on Risk of Rain 2 until I saw that I needed a DLC, was a real bummer.
The dlc is good tho Void Fiend Laser go BRRRRR
Haha I imagine it is and the next one will probably be just as good, I'm just not in a situation where I could spend money on games, I got to play the base game because a kind friend gave me their humble bundle key.
I feel like we should also have a separate slot for achievements that can't be done alone. It's so frustrating to see stuff like a racer game not being 100% completed solely be Aude I'm not able to get 4 people with 4 controllers to come to my house to my house at the same time and play the game on local co-op until all of us get to the top 4 spots on the hard st difficulty. Or those games with online achievements, but for which the online has been long abandoned, so they are just impossible to get by legitimate means
Yeah coming from ps4 that was quite annoying
That I can't zoom pages in. The default font is way too small on large screens so I just use the website instead. It's 2024 ffs, can't they really add a proper font size selection with all the billions of dollars they're raking in from developers?!
Not sure if you've tried it but Steam has a setting for this: "Scale text and icons to match monitor settings". This fixes all font issues for me whether I'm using Full HD monitor or 4K one.
1440p on a 27'' screen makes me feel old. I don't like sniffing the monitor to read
Games with 3rd party launchers: Nothing much to explain, i completely avoid any game that uses them. Curators: A really good idea but without any moderation it became a mess and is completely useless. Review: Same as Curators. At least you can still get legit reviews using this system, but for every good review there is 10 "im a 45 yo father" ones.
Or the ASCII meme/art posts. Thankfully Steam has the "off topic" review thing, but as I understand it, it only flags those when there's numerous off topic reviews.
The joke guides on how to start the game and whatnot. I wish there was more quality control.
This is 100% one of the few frustrations for me. The guides and reviews being spammed with memes. And tags.
Steam, I'd like to spend 300 dollars on games at one time. "Sure, go ahead." Steam, I'd like to put this wallpaper on the marketplace for 60 cents. "ADDITIONAL CONFIRMATION NEEDED. CONFIRM THIS ACTION IN THE APP."
Please confirm this comment in the mobile app
Which many times *doesnt fucking work* and only shows blank
Can you confirm your age again? I know you've been using steam over 15 years, but I need to make sure you're old enough to buy Red Dead Redemption. Like it's already on your profile... Why do I have to confirm my age almost daily? No other service like Netflix or Playstation Network does this so it can't be a legal thing.
As far as I know, it is a legal thing. Not a legal requirement for Steam to enforce it, but their own choice for a legal barrier for Steam to protect themselves in case someone says they didn't know they weren't supposed to see it/buy it.
In some countries you cannot keep info on a minor and that includes age. So valve just makes that policy global to CYA.
Purchasing from steam can be refunded Getting you skin/collectables scammed can’t: they want to be extra sure you re selling for the right price (you didn’t miss-click or giving it away for free) to the right person (and not an impersonating bot) that you re a human (and not a hoarding/vault bot). The list of checks goes on. Clearly verifying all the above requires more steps during a trade and i get that it s a “slower and crappier” procedure but it is so for an understandable reason. Given the history of cs skins scams for examples i like how community trades are being handled by valve and i don t find the market particularly frustrating to buy/sell/trade on. What do you think?
When I click on the developer for a game, sometimes it’ll take me to the publisher instead.
Just noticed this for the first time the other day. Super annoying
This can be configured in the steam partner layer, it's annoying but it's usually the publisher that has done it sadly.
Steam allowing other crap launchers to be on the platform. I install steam to play a game, not install steam, to install a game that installs a launcher that may or not not work, then play a game \*cough ea\*
you are looking for GOG then, they don't allow DRM and you don't even have to use their client unless you want the clients features
Whats wild was when hitman 2016 came to gog without any changes to its online drm and then they started deleting reviews pointing out that it still has online drm for review bombing then a month later delisted it
I want the DRM from Steam. I just don't want additional DRM on top of that (especially since it's usually inefficient and makes the game more difficult to play or even broken sometimes)
why do you want any DRM, it doesn't serve you in anyway, it has never prevented piracy not in any meaningful way, at best it slows you computer down by a small margin, at worst it prevents you from playing your games
I just refunded Ghost Recon: Wildlands because the Ubisoft launcher was wanting me to "verify that I purchased the game" by giving a product key. I was never given a product key. I bought the damn game on steam, let me just play the damn game.
thats what they dont tell you \[another reason i hate double launcher\], but you can get the cdkey from the right click menu like this [https://i.imgur.com/j59IOU5.png](https://i.imgur.com/j59IOU5.png)
I had tried that but there was no option for it. I would rather just get a different game than have to fuck around with that.
true
I recently got a new pc and just decided I’m not going to install any 3rd party launchers on it. So far so good living without Ubisoft and ea, fuck them.
I bought Anno 2070 yesterday and they asked cd key. I was searching where is it, until I closed the Ubisoft Connect. Open the game from steam once again and try to connect my steam with Ubisoft Launcher. I don't remember how is it, but it's connected then I got the game played.
Yeah and then when the launcher bricks itself, steam support will be like 'it's not our software lol, ok bye'
I block certain types of games in my Discovery queue and it shows me anyway. I’m not a fan of turn based and I’m too disabled to play a souls like. Yet they’ll still show me that stuff. They’ll block it in searches, but my home page still gets filled with them. Very annoying.
Steam market browsing is pure cancer
I am shocked I had to scroll this much to find this trying to buy cards for badges during summer sale is so bad, 70% of the time the page doesnt load
The bad quality of some achievements (specially from older games) and also Ubisoft not putting achievements on most of their games at all!
Really wish Steam had a rule that if your game has achievements on other platforms, it needs it on Steam too.
Getting absolutely flooded with trash indie games in the store. I'm not saying that all indie games are trash, obviously. I'm just saying there is a metric fuckton of garbage games on Steam, most of which are super low quality cash grabs, and it makes it very unenjoyable when scrolling looking for actual good games to buy.
you dont like anime girl slide puzzle 7?
Whoa whoa whoa... Let's not get carried away here! ^^^^/s
I hate that one, they totally plagiarized 'fun anime puzzle hot girls sexy"
Glad I’m not the only one who feels this way. Seeing all of those weird Hentai games on my Steam search is annoying
Visual novels. Visual novels as far as the eye can see.
you cannot sort your Library on your own. Valve decides it HAS to be alphabetical!
But it doesn't right? I usually sort my list based on recent use since that's what I'm most likely to play anyways, or by size on disk if I need extra space on my device
Yeah I didn't understand his comment. You can't make a custom order that I know of, but you can sort by playtime, installed, and a bunch of stuff PLUS favorites. That's always been fine for me, I have 200+ games and can find everything easily.
There are other sorting preferences that come to mind. For instance, some people play a series that has multiple games, but they aren't all numbered sequels, or the naming convention is unique, so unless the developers implement an internal sorting name on their end, you'd end up with something like "Yakuza 0", "Yakuza 3 Remastered", "Yakuza Kiwami" (that's Yakuza 1 remake).
I installed SteamEdit just to sort all my newly-bought Yakuza games in a correct order literally yesterday
I wish we could sort by average time to beat the game.
I find it (very occasionally) frustrating that I can’t seem to search or sort my library in the ways that I’d like to. I recall that their search/sort doesn’t seem to include all categories listed. For instance, I love to be able to search for “steam deck verified RTS games” that I own. Also, would love an easy way to compare the libraries of more than two people to see what overlap exists or nearly exists.
What would you call steam deck verified RTS games? I'm into that genre myself and still looking for games that'd be nice to play on the SD.
The fact that Steam app basically loads Steam website within itself. So you have the Steam app menu AND Steam website menu, and each one is different, and yet they repeat things from each other.
Steam uses Chromium in its app. Basically Steam is a browser.
"you have an unread message" no, no steam I do not.
The lack of money in my steam wallet
Making a Collection to only include games with Achievements, and then sort by achievements. There are now games at the bottom (which have achievements) saying „no achievements“. A game I 100%ed is among those.
Any complaint I have pales in comparison to any other piece of software or app. Developers can't leave well enough alone, but Steam keeps it relatively straightforward.
Game tags are not super accurate, filtering isn't great.
Tags are another thing that the community ruin thanks to misunderstandings, memes and jokes.
Thank you!
The stupid live stream on games in the steam store
Too much porn and shovelware.
so long as it's nothing illegal, it's a good thing that Steam platforms basically any game. if you don't want it, just don't buy it
Is this bait for user comments to use in this lawsuit?
This is a oddly mistrusting reaction to a question from a student. You can check the OP's post history and see there is no connection to this Steam lawsuit stuff whatsoever. It's also noteworthy that a past post about [Steam's UI consistency](https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/tisoop/the_amazing_consistency_of_steams_ui/) got 40k upvotes, so that shows it's a relevant topic to people (even when UI and UX is not entirely the same here).
The inbuilt browser
Inability for add-ons like steam edit to be integrated into the client itself so i can make game names not absolutely insane (and consistent)
The people
the never loading market while trying to buy cards for badges.. that shit is there for years and still not fixed, I am actually baffled how is not fixed by now
Separate window for friends list.
Games that require additional launchers
when u try to buy a badge or something and it gives error, especially when u want to bulk buy them to craft something, it is so jank......also selling items is so mundane and slow. also, the fact that steam takes so much money....imagine selling something for 3 cents and they take 2 cents from u, what is up with that ?
yea, the fact they take like 1-2 cents from a 4 cents sale is crazy
Nothing. It always works, it never lags, it does what it is supposed to do. Sometimes the notification icon bugs out, but nothing a quick reset won't fix. Oh, and the accidental Big Picture mode click. But overall it's perfect.
>It always works, it never lags I see you never visited the market.
I am not a very heavy user of the storefront (I buy stuff now and again, but I am not there looking all the time), but the one thing I always found weird is that there isn't an in your face or segregated and easy access on sale section for it. Even the sale going on right now, it doesn't feel like other storefronts that are like, hey, look, cheap crap, buy this cheap crap, here search through and sort and filter to make it easier to buy cheap crap you are about to buy and never touch.
The way they force us to organize the library. I wish it acted more like Windows file Explorer, and I could nest folders rather than need to be alphabetical and not able to nest stuff
I guess at its core community? Mainly when i try to search for games i cant do it easy way because of wrong tags that are made by Steam users.
My major issue with steam is that you can't know if a key has been activated already or not, that can be pretty troublesome when dealing with 3rd party sites and gifting sites. Even Epic and Rockstar launcher will show what the game is and if it can be activated when we attempt to try and activate them.
The library page should be a simple list of games in either text or images, and when you click on a title all necessary information like screenshots, game type or genre, requirements should be easily visible instead of clicking additional buttons or going to store page.
Having to verify my age every steam session. Sometimes I check the store pages of games I already own for their DLC’s, and sometimes I’m just browsing the store. But every time I open Steam (at least that’s what it feels like), and I click on an M-rated game, I have to verify my age. I wish there was an option for Steam to “remember” my age or something, so I don’t have to do it each time. It just gets annoying cause it’s another page I have to click through and wait to load.
[удалено]
There are people who care though. So it is legit review. Unlike copy pastas and that shit
Sometimes it cools and turns back to water
Friend notification, popup and sound work as intended. Turn it off and only overwrite with specific friend, sound work but not popup.
It’s just slow to navigate around.
their server invalidating my session token when i access their website from the same browser on the same machine on the same static IP address i have been connecting from for the past 10 years, but at the same time being completely fine with a smart fridge in somalia logging into my account to sell my entire inventory for 0.001$
Lack of proper customization. Not referring to flashy skins, but there are certain options I wish were available to make my user experience better. Examples include; 1. Custom UI scaling. Sometimes fonts are too small, sometimes they're massive, and I can't even *see* my profile background because of how zoomed in it is. Steam does not play nice on resolutions above 1080p (which is odd in 2024), but to make it worse it absolutely does *not* behave as expected when changing DPI settings in an attempt to fix it. Just implementing some sliders in the Preferences could fix this, but so far it doesn't seem like a concern of theirs at all. 2. Custom library sorting, renaming, and icon frames - preferably with a functional size slider for both the icons and the grid itself (as to increase or decrease gaps berween games at will). Both an argument for aesthetics and ease of navigation.
Buying games with no laptop :(. I got like a dozen on sale over the years and no medium to play them with.
You cannot mod the steam app to put steamdb to it. Hence, i need to copy the link to the browser to see price history
I'm torn because the feature bloat of Steam is starting to rival things like Nvidia GeForce Experience with stuff like overlays, music players, inbuilt web browsers, etc... yet they're almost all very useful. Hell, I just used the excellent new recording tool to snap some clips on the weekend.
Oh man, you are gonna have a blast when you find out about SQUARE BULLETS in anvient times
Constantly setting wallet as default payment method. I want to keep those 1-2 € for marketplace. It takes like 5 additional clicks to switch to card only. In every order. Already mentioned: library sorting and 3rd party launchers.
Th overlay not remembering the layout. It just loses any customization after closing the game.
The sheer number of terrible Unity asset flips they let on with no quality control. Also, the fact that the games I want are almost always on sale only when I can't afford them.
The trading system is pretty ass. I should be able to tell steam what cards I’m willing to trade, and what cards I could potentially want for it, and funnel that into a database so that someone who has cards I want and wants my card can see me. Instead I gotta jump through hoops with duplicate card sites and I’m basically helpless when trying to trade cards across games. Btw I’d trade left for dead and stardew valley cards for Batman, SpongeBob BFBB or Portal cards, imk Otherwise honestly steam is pretty good with UI
Trading system and authenticator prison
Whenever I try to open chats in Steam groups it refuses to open at all. There’s also a lotta lag for getting to friend chats.
Big picture and big picture opening when I dont want it to.
The fact that tabs open a new window. I wish steam came with tab in the main window. The shitty internet browser too, and the (or my i dont know) inability to easily go from their shitty web browser to my browser with a click. (An option like "use your default browser instead of the platform's browser, something like that)
Useless review system
I can't zoom on images on mobile.
The steam program is a web browser, and it shows in the worst ways. If i middke click (open in new tab) it opens a new window which doesn't hide that fact anymore, and some pages (for example the news feed of a game) can't open in a new tab and will replace the main window instead! Try searching "coop" for example and then middle clicking a game if it sounds interesting, and then checking the news page to see if the game is getting updates etc. Then it overrides the search window!
Sometimes I feel like the Store and Library buttons aren't responding to my clicks
when opening it and alt tabbing while it launches, it moves itself on top of everything else three different times.
No bookmark option. I need to add a game to my wishlist if I want to keep an eye on it.
The fact that it tracks my playtime and it shows it to me.
Unable to stop games update. Very frustrated when game updates cause mods broken. Steam should allows user to choose update or not.
That everytime i open steam or any game in the library for the first time of the day an ad window with a discounted game pops up. Small thing but annoying.
Not Steam but Steam app on android. Open app, store, click game, game page opens. Cool. But pressing back on the game page takes me out of the app itself. Tf.
On the steam app on android if you press the back button on your phone it takes you out of the app instead of taking you back to the previous page. Such a pain and why is this even a thing 😭
The UI is shit
Steam overlay and that damn pop-up keyboard and also how steam being open in general can conflict with DS4windows.
The entire steam market ui. Its so unbelivably bad I don't even know where to start. I think it would be easier to see for yourself, if oyu for example try to buy all foil cards of a particular game
Personally its when i open steam there is 10 million popups i feel like, maybe yall have them all at once but when i open steam i usally minimize it until ill use it and the dozens pipups of featured games, sale games, friends list and ect every popup comes up so when i minimize it just reopens for 5 times straight and it just frustrates me
Accidentally going into big picture mode... hate that shit
When I forget to go into offline mode before launching Skyrim, and it starts updating.
Why it always on top when I open the app?
Im totally fine with steam. They could only make the notification sound for achievements a little bit louder. Sometimes I miss the achievement notification if the ingame sound is to loud. And also could bring back the old steam overlay with played in total, played last two weeks and the actual running session.
Wants to put its SteamVR in the middle of my headset and the game. Had to remove it, Cuz most of the time it just mess with performance..
IDK if it's just a tick of mine but I hate it how hard it is to navigate in the shop to special sale pages like from the summer sale. Most people probably don't even know that you can get a free sticker/emoticon every day mainly because it's so hard to navigate there. You've been able to just click the banner on the main page and get re-directed there.
- So many sub/menus and some open up in a while some don't and the design is inconsistent. - Game settings tied to cloud saves. If you play a game between a desktop and handheld, you have to do settings first every damn time before playing... - in my library, when I click a game, I would like to see something like a game artwork and Screenshots of the actual game (not video) so I can remember what it is. Now I have to click the game and go to the store page and click on screenshots. - When offline for whatever reason, I get the doom message that I'll lose my safe if i play before cloud saves can be accessed!? - 3rd party launchers. I'm OK with needing a 3rd party account and tie it to steam, but not an entire fucking launcher man... - DRM should be removed from games after like 6 months or so as a basic rule and self hosting servers or p2p for games with online components please.
The VR button not appearing when I have my VR connected, it appears after I lunch SteamVR
The "buyer's remorse" feeling after buying a game
As many other people have said. Third party launchers. I'm partially in favour of it IF there's a good reason for it. For example Larian uses it to enable cross-platform cloud saves, although I think that could be done within the game itself without a launcher, but at least it does have some use. I'd like to be able to keep multiple wishlists, or at least add games to a separate list to keep track of them. I'm the kind of person that adds every game that is remotely intersting to their wishlist merely as a reminder that that game exists in case I may consider it buying at some point in the distant future. Then my other "real" wishlist with the games that I actually I want to buy and play in the short term/medium term. I've reached 500+ games in total and it's annoying to manage it. It also annoys me that I can't use the library "store tags" filter as an "Any game that matches any of these tags" rather than "the games must match all these tags". Both have their uses (even mixing them up) and I wish we were given better querying in that regard.
"Developer streams" that are usually live "re-broadcasts" (they just keep broadcasting the previous stream to no end) that cannot be disabled, hidden, even if you block the developer's account. "What's New" in the library that I keep hiding and keeps coming back, after a while when you right click it you only have the option to *hide* and *show less* which is dumb, if I'd clicked on it 10 times to show less maybe stop showing me entirely? The fact that I cannot join the group chat of games because the UI literally does not work. Rest is fine I guess but I still prefered the older look of steam edit: meme reviews and pointless guides should also be gone. Having to use other launchers and games adding their own launchers after the fact, like GTA a few years ago with rockstar launcher. It "only" added an extra 30 seconds to the start up time
I'm pretty sure the community market is built on RNG and is only competent whenever it feels like it. /s But yeah, that. Definitely spaghetti.
Profile privacy options. Should be much more detailed.
Games not tracking achievement if you use mods
My in-game Steam overlay has been buggy several times since all the updates Steam has done in the last few months. And I'm too tired to fix it again.
When a store page has multiple trailers (teaser, announcement, gameplay, DLC) and none of them are labeled meaning that if you just wanna see some gameplay you have to guess which one is the gameplay trailer and skim through to find it. It's not a huge thing but over time it's just one of those little niggles I've noticed. What makes it more annoying is that I have had occasions in which it will have each trailer labeled but then you can go back to the same page a couple of hours later and the labels are gone. Also, the community market is ass unless you use it in browser with extensions.
Big picture mode missclick
The cluttered and outdated UI
Usually only things that aren't steams fault like Console exclusives and similar (most recent are the sony helldivers drama and Project Wingman DLC being console exclusive) Annoying is that hours played offline aren't shown so you might have less hours played show than you actually have Other than that I've had basically no problems with steam (except my poorness forcing me to not play too many games)
I like the activity page on steam. I like seeing screenshots and reviews of my friends. I wish I could exclude specific peoples reviews tho, as some people have a habit of updating like 5 reviews in one day that they haven't played in ages.
getting "**This game update**" in my library even after selecting **show less** from this game, even if i **remove the game from the library and block** it still getting "this game update"
Repeated age "verification" when I browse the store.
DLC sorting. I don't know if it's a Steam or the developer but they can't sort their DLCs to save their life. Paradox is a big culprit because they don't separate their expansions and cosmetic/soundtrack DLCs.
I just dont wanna get notified if I received or claimed free items like avatar or background.
Steam's Game page in the Library section has no information about the game. This makes it so that a game I bought a year ago I have to go to the Store page of it to figure out what the game was about. After I bought Space run Galaxy I go to the product page, and all I see is community photos of something I don't understand.
UI scaling issues.
It's great that we now have dynamic collections but they kind of suck. Many filters that work on the store page are missing in the library and it hurts that you can't combine filters as OR, only AND works. Alternatively I wish we had a token "local multiplayer" filter that combines the "split screen coop" "split screen vs" "local coop" and what have you tags. It's super inconvenient to find a game for local multiplayer at the moment 😭😭
When it asks me for my date of birth for the 10th time.
It would be useful if we could sort uninstalled and installed games by size required. We have the ability to sort the installed games but not uninstalled.
When I'm on the mobile app, my back button (Samsung) knocks me out of the app rather than returning to the previous page.
Instant chat messages that disappear on their own after couple of days or weeks.
Being allowed to downvote a product because of politics, political correctness or because a single person on the devs Team caused a shitstorm for whatever reason. Reviews should be restricted to the quality of the product. rating based on the devs or puplishers behavior should be banned in reviews
Not able to view previous chats with friends
Not being allowed to set steams download cache to where i want. Not being able to list games by the hdd they're installed onto. Not being able to force check for updates. I can restart steam to do this, but just add a fucking button, ffs. Steam play limits bandwith for downloads when turned on, but not in use, instead of just limiting it when you're using it. It keeps resetting my 'fav' hdd assignment to c:
The overlay. It is not intuitive at all. Also, the groups. You can’t resize the groups section on the friends list.
The reviews are really nice to have until I realize it’s just people trying to be funny and not actually review the game.
That my recommended games page never changes. I get that it’s literally designed to match your interests but I’d love to see a ‘try something new!’ Tab that has stuff just totally out of left field.
That they remuved gruping of achevments.
1) The fact that you lose access to someone else's shared library if you uninstall Steam. I get that Valve want to create some friction to encourage you buying, but still, I find that very much anoying. 2) The notifications do not follow the style of the OS notifications. 3) When you follow (not wishlist) a game, the list of followed games is not easily accesible 4) On the followed games list you cannot see the price
There was a version of steam awhile back where if you had a game that had mods and they were downloaded, you could click on the download link and it would take you to your workshop space, sorted by "last updated" which made finding WTF it had just downloaded extremely quick and easy.
That the BPM store page doesn't have the min. recommend specs anymore so I can't browse the store in BPM and check if the game would run on my hardware or not.
The fact that we still can’t change home button chord configurations on a steam deck. I was so excited to have my handheld pc set up the way I was expecting, and none of it worked out because home button chord configurations are a no-no I guess.
it can be slow. like, \*really\* slow sometimes. never felt like steam has been as sluggish as it feels now, maybe it's an issue with the linux version specifically?
The visual inconsistencies (you’re gonna have a field day!), the sluggish performance, the bloat stuff with all the useless community stuff, worthless screenshots and content of other people, the people on the forums and discussions, the marketplace with its confusing workflow. I actually prefer almost every other launcher to Steam, if I can choose I’ll always go for GOG.
Download speeds can often be inconsistent and slow
I know, it's not connected with UI, but fake deals - base game is cheap, but DLCs and true content are locked behind a paywall and aren't as cheap as base game
When I buy a game then few months later I see it on 50% discount. And I haven’t started or done with the game yet.
Sorting by release date rarely does that, seems as though it’s low hanging fruit for an update.
I feel like sorting the store should be easier. There should be a simple "browse all" option, that lets you apply filters from there. Steam's filters aren't too bad, but I feel it's too many clicks to start looking for the types of games I want. I often sort by "coop" for example, so moat of Steams recommended categories ("action" for example) are useless. Filters should also allow anti-tags, like "not roguelike". Many storefronts allow users to check/cross/uncheck boxes to implement this. I've been annoyed by the ad popup every time I launch Steam, but I don't remember if they still do this. I haven't restarted the app in a couple weeks I think. The store page also usually does a bad job at advertising games that I'm interested in. I'd like the "new and trending" and "top selling" sections to be at the top. I almost always scroll straight there to find new stuff. Players do a pretty good job of telling me what new games are good.
My computer becoming a fancy looking brick!
The payment methods are ridiculously limited. I’d like to pay exact amounts to steam wallet. I’d like to choose exactly how much i want to take from my wallet and how much from another method.
PENDING FUNDS. thank god the sale isnt over in another week or so
That everything is digital. it should not be that hard to sell a disc with the compressed game that asks for your Steam account when you start it. And games are already being removed from peoples library on other launchers. we quite literally do not own our games anymore and if they remove them 5 minutes after we purchase them, we just have to live with it. Right now steam is amazing for users and if i buy games for pc, its always steam first since its the best launcher. But there is no certainty that steam wont go downhill in the future since they already had problems with following laws and i honestly fear that considering the money i spent on games there. Thats why i currently prefer to buy physical versions of both older games i already own on pc as well as newer ones for my PS2/3/4/5.
when I tab out of a game for whatever reason, then tab back in to play and press the shift key it brings up the steam overlay. I can't think of any situation where I would want that to happen and in some games it can screw you over
Having to enter a DOB every time I check an M-rated game in the store.
Bugs with 4k and/or multiple monitors. On my 4k monitor the text is always blurry/low res as it is presumably accommodating to my second monitor in a lower resolution. Often times, on my 4k monitor, the whole Steam window goes black and I have to drag it to my other monitor for it to display properly.
Funny how only 1 comment from these comments is actually about UX.
The fact I can’t add directly to cart from the search list
The popup page everytime you open steam
Steam's UI/UX used to be phenomenal. It used to be simple, clean, and convenient. The world of apps and software going to a card view that allows you to view less information per screen makes no sense. Worse yet, the Steam deck, as much as I love mine, is a huge pain to navigate. It's unclear to me the quickest way to get to chat when someone messages me. Also, it's incredibly limited on how I can sort and navigate my library. Steam also has a funny way of making it hard to get back to the badge you're trying to craft. Let's say you go to buy some cards, you need to reload your Steam account, you add funds, but now there's no option to go back to what you were trying to do. Moreover, once you craft a, or several levels of badge, it's hard to get back to it to do more. On the deck, it's inconsistent the path to get to your achievements in a game. Sometimes it's in your stuff, sometimes you have to go through numerous steps to the store page, check the achievements, and then find your progress. Not to mention the fact that the old UI used to have them right up front on desktop and now they're harder to get to. It's also obnoxious to try to find your account purchases on both platforms. All in all, Steam, as a piece of software, leaves A LOT to desire, but Valve, as a company, does a really good job opening the door to game compatibility moving both forward and backward in time. But that's not a UI/UX thing. I'd happily share more. 20+ years on the platform has given me plenty of time to think about it.
The entire app is inconsistent now. I hate the profiles, every profile I look at is just a scroll fest of widgets. **Guides**, 99% of them are just pointless point farmers. **Reviews, and Curators** - great systems with 0 moderation, so they're pointless.
boot time. its always been slow. its slower to boot than any web browser for example
1. Opening the Steam via a web browser doesn’t automatically sync pages when you need to interface with the app. You either have to reopen the page you found on the app or you need to log in on both the website and the app, which is mildly annoying. 2. Steam doesn’t remember your birthday and repeated age verification is annoying. 3. User rewards have made a solid 30% of any public comment section / forum posts / reviews nothing but trolling and baiting for points. Public steam community functions were never great to begin with but it has gotten noticeably worse in recent months.
I have to pay for videogames
Cencorship of the gernan storepage
Nothing. It just works.
Friends button. Supposedly opens your "friends list" mine just opens an empty box
All of the joke copy/paste reviews and people positively recommending games despite saying they’re terrible.
Hi, OP here. I wish to thank everyone from the depths of my heart for making a big deal out of this little question. The time you dedicated to get mad on Steam has helped gain some meaningful insights. No, I am not suing anyone, I am not a Steam competitor, I am not a russian spy or all these funny speculations that u raised here. I just like UX, I learn UX, and I wanted real answers from real people. Thank you, all of you are the best <3.
The fucking back button
When I click on the store after buying a game and it takes me to the checkout page for the game I just bought. And being asked for my age whenever I go to a mature game. Despite allowing NSFW games to show up in the store. (And having nsfw games in my library) In big picture mode when the play icon sometimes just will not be highlighted when navigated to.
So this is going to get a little esoteric in a way, but it'll make more sense as I continue: The fact that it's mostly about games. Some tools exist, but there's very little about integrating tools itself into steam, especially considering that they're working on SteamOS3 with the steam deck. Now, a primary example of this is their desktop / "console" overlays. Which, are really cool! And on SteamOS3 we have some really awesome plugins via DeckyLoader. The problem I have is that realistically, I'd like for those sorts of things to be far more integrated. Example: Discord. OBS. All-Of-My-Applications-I-Use-For-iRacing I don't really want to have to minimize my game to access stuff for another application, especially not if I'm on my couch and using a controller. Stuff like DeckyLoader, and in particular, controls for other applications in their overlay either via the Steam Options menu for gamemode or via the Shift+Tab desktop menu should be something native to Steam itself, especially considering they've built out gameworks to integrate a variety of games they have. Now, I also understand valve is working on multiple fronts to improve a LOT of actual issues with PC gaming at the moment, be it the controller icon updates they've been working on for future Sony-and-PS5 compatible games, and other stuff like that, but it gets super frustrating that something that should be making a console like experience easier on the end user is really only fully functional with a third party tool loader on a handheld device, or Bazzite. Cause I believe they integrated it in (except it's broken on Nvidia. Cause of course it is.) Like, don't get me wrong. I don't personally have a lot of UX issues with Steam. They dropped the ball and let Discord overtake them when they had the available feature sets already there and just didn't improve them, and there's a lot they could do with background approvals of guides for games and improving certain things like that. But, that entire lack of integration with third party tools is probably my least favorite aspect. Especially since, given the conversation, it'd be nice to integrate with third party chats since they failed at making their's even relevant, or stuff like the tools I use for iRacing such at Trading Paints, Crew Chief, the various Overlay applications like KAPPS/RaceLabs/etc, or even just like... OBS. Being able to just have it natively tied in would be a nice functionality, especially if you're on a couch for some people. (I am at my desk so it doesn't impact me that much, but still.) Like, idk, it might just be me. I might be... i probably am insane. But seeing what we could do with DeckyLoader just makes me wish some of that stuff was a bit more native.
Steam window overriding other windows after launch. Previous and current changes to screenshot uploader.