Steam overhauls chat client, bears similarities to Discord
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What may have been overlooked due to the myriad of E3 announcements, Valve decided to overhaul Steam’s chat client. Now it’s more user-friendly like Discord is.
According to the announcement, this will bring a modernized chat experience that is now multi-media friendly. If you want to show off a funny video you just saw or post a GIF, they will now upload directly into the chat instead of being displayed as a series of links.
The friends list has been redesigned to display names by what game they’re playing, who’s already in a party, and if they’re about to start a match. You can also now more easily invite multiple friends into a group chat. You will be able to create channels within your group chats for whatever topic you like. To invite people into your chat, you can create and send a link.
Full changes to the chat client include:
- Ability to share images by pasting images or uploading image files into chat
- Embedding support for YouTube, Imgur, Giphy, Twitter, Twitch, and more
- Rich link previews for URLs
- /me command for emotes
- /giphy for random gifs that may or may not say exactly what you want
- /code command for styling blocks of code
- Group chats are now persistent, you don’t need to rejoin every time you start Steam
- @mention support for group chat members (@here, @all, @member, etc)
- Group chats are available on the web
- Group chats now support multiple text and voice channels
- Custom group chat invite links – shareable in and outside of Steam
- Custom notification settings per group chats and channels
- Saved groups have role-based permissions
- Voice chat updated to new WebRTC-based backend
- Voice chat uses high quality Opus encoding
- Voice chat traffic payloads are encrypted
- Voice chat traffic is now relayed through Steam servers for low-latency connectivity and for privacy so your IP is never disclosed to those you chat with
- Voice calls from blocked users are automatically blocked
- Voice chat open mic support is improved with better noise filtering and volume detection
- Voice channels include a special text sub-channel for voice members only
- Friends in voice chats in mutual groups are displayed in the Friends List
- Voice controls are displayed in the Friends List whenever a voice chat is active
- Voice chat now supports individual volume for other voice chat members
- When voice chatting in a group, users can create multiple channels without needing an admin to add additional channels.
- Unless saved, voice channels are automatically removed when the last voice member leaves
- In-game friends are now sorted to the top of the Friends List
- In-game friends playing the same game are grouped together in the Friends List
- Setting to promote the display of nicknames
- Expanding the Friends List window will dock chats in the window in a side-by-side view
- Setting to preserve chat window state after restarting Steam Client
- Steam Client now displays your Steam avatar and profile name together in the account dropdown
- Notification of unread messages appears at the top of your friends list
- Drag and drop friends: to invite to group chats, add to favorites, and add to friend categories
- Easily add multiple friends to group chats or categories with new find-as-you-type friend selection tools
- Can now scroll back to load up to two weeks of chat history
- Group chats also keep up to two weeks of chat history
- Improved display of timestamps, which are now always enabled
- New “Invisible” mode allows you to appear offline, but still view your Friends List and chat
- Updated display of friends who are “Away”
- Offline friend “Last online” time now more reliable
- Offline friends can be sorted by name or last online
- Added key to allow localized rich presence information to be displayed in the Steam Client
- In game friends can now show additional information such as level or match, in the Friends List and chats
- Friends in a party together are shown in a group in the Friends List, for games which have integrated with the Steamworks Rich Presence API
- Can rename existing friend categories
- Added ability to add/remove multiple friends from a category at once
- Drag and drop to add friends to categories
- Friend categories (including built-in categories such as “Offline” or “In Game”) remember their open or collapsed state
- Favorite friends and chats can be pinned to the top of the Friends List
- New friend management page makes it easier to manage friends, invites, groups, followed games, and more on the Steam Community
- New custom friend-request links that can be sent outside of Steam to allow you to more easily add friends
- Added ability to view Inventory and send Trade Offers from right click menu
- Incoming Trade Offers from friends or users you are chatting with will show a notification and an inline message in chat
- Built-in option to easily share your Steam Trade URL in chat rooms
- New chat features can be delivered without the need to update the entire Steam client
- Web chat now uses a websocket-based connection for much better reliability and speed
- Nearly every feature available to Steam Client chat is also available from a web browser
- Changing friend nicknames, categories, and other friends settings will now be synced between all your online sessions
- Messages delivered to sessions that have been idle are treated as “unread”
- Sending a chat message will now show an error if there was any problem delivering the message
- When sending a URL or something that looks like a URL, they will become clickable but maintain their original text
These new features are currently only available in beta. To try out the beta, click here.
Via: Neowin
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