Valve continues to improve the social capabilities of the Steam platform. The company announced an updated chat system with support for videos, GIFs, tweets and other media content.
In addition, Valve announced a new interface for Steam group chats, the ability to save lists of interlocutors for future discussions, expanded functionality of the friends list and other features. The company also worked on the voice call function, improving the quality of communication between subscribers.
Innovations are already being tested in an open mode, which everyone can join. They are available both in the browser and in the desktop application.
Note that Valve’s innovations are in many ways similar to the capabilities of the popular online gaming messenger Discord, which also supports voice chats, media insertion and friend lists. As of mid-May 2018, Discord’s global audience was 45 million people.
Valve takes a comprehensive approach to improving the social functionality of Steam. Last week, the company announced that it will soon allow developers and publishers to create personal pages in the Steam store with news and lists of games of this company or author.
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