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Comment by dmonitor | Hacker News Reader

If anything, it’s just gotten better for everyone.

How is it better? Seems to me the client is about the same as it ever was, which is another way of saying stagnant. Only the games have changed, and they don't make the games.

The client supports seamlessly streaming games from my PC to any device I own. A friend in another city is able to play local co-op games that have no online support.

Controller support in Steam has continued to improve: supporting pretty much any controller, gyroscopes, per-game custom mappings, sharing/applying community created mappings, etc. I'm not aware of anything similar in competitor's stores.

Library filtering and search is hugely improved over the old system that only supported manually adding games to your own tag categories. "Dynamic collections" can be created which include games based on store tags, genre, controller support, whether a particular list of friends also have the game, and a few other things.

Updates/news for games you own or are following is a lot more visible than it used to be as well.

Proton was the one meaningful new feature, and that's only if you use Linux. Otherwise it's gotten more stable, which was a low bar.

Sometimes software that runs stable and does its thing, and does so in the same manner for years, is quite refreshing. Doing its job good, and stable, wothout adding shit nobody needs is a goodbthing.

Aye, I still use MATE on Linux because I don't need a new, fancy interface or new desktop effects, I just need something simple to do what it needs to do.

Same with Steam -- it's just an interface to get to the games. Doesn't need to be obtrusive or detailed, just good enough to help me do what I need it to do.

To be clear, I like that they haven't added more features. Though Steam always did a lot of unnecessary stuff to begin with, like forcing updates or opening itself when I want to run a game.

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