Steam rolls out new, sleek chat update

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.

Valve

The new and improved Steam Chat, meanwhile, is lookin’ sharp.

Valve

The updated friends list makes things easier to navigate and organize. Pick your favorite friends!

Valve

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.

Valve via Petrana Radulovic