Brand New Live Steam Chat | News and opinions

As all social networks know, keeping users in a network as long as possible increases revenue generated. The same is true of Steam. Valve wants you to visit and buy games, but you are using its community features because it is likely that this will likely result in more gaming purchases. The problem is that Discord attracts Steam users, but Valve is trying to solve this problem this week with a whole new Steam Chat experience.

As Verge reports, this new Steam Chat was created to compete with Discord. App that is extremely popular with gamers. A beta version of Steam Chat was launched for the Steam client in June, but this week the new chat experience is available to everyone in the Steam client and for web browsers.

It is intended to provide an enhanced and enriched discussion experience. Valve did this by allowing you to do a lot more discussion. The Friends List allows you to save favorites, group friends by game or party, and then easily start a group chat. It is also possible to display additional details next to the name of a friend per game. For example, what game a particular friend plays, what state he is in the game, and what he serves, eg matchmaking.

Regarding the chat experience, it is now possible to post pictures and GIFs online, videos can be embedded and tweets can be shared without leaving the interface. Friends can even be brought into an ongoing group conversation simply by dragging their name into the chat window to trigger the sending of an invitation. The same can be achieved by sending a link to someone via email, message or text.

If you regularly play the same game with other players, Steam Chat allows you to create persistent group conversations. It's easy to go back directly to a discussion without looking to see who's online

For voice chat, Valve has rewritten the backend using WebRTC and Opus encoding. This means that the quality of the voice will be much higher (clear and clear) and that security is assured because Valve uses encryption and the voice data is only processed by the Steam servers. Valve has also made sure that it is very clear which of your friends are currently chatting, which allows you to easily enter group conversations.

Will it be enough to disconnect Discord for game discussions? This is unlikely in the short term, but what Valve offers is certainly seductive. I think we'll see new players trying and staying with Steam Chat, while Discord users can try and change. In the end, both options will continue to gain popularity.