Steam has been an essential part of the gaming landscape for years. It was all the more frustrating that an important feature worked poorly for a long time. But now Valve has brought about a positive change.
Which feature is it? Steam keeps getting new features, such as to check your performance. In this case, the discussion is about the trailers on the platform. If you’re looking for a new game and browsing the shop page, you’ll sooner or later come across a trailer. Ideally, it gives a good first impression of what to expect.
It’s annoying when playback stutters, doesn’t run smoothly, and the quality leaves much to be desired. Steam users are familiar with this problem and have probably turned to trailers on YouTube for years because Valve’s own platform was quite frustrating in this regard.
But now the annoyance has come to an end, Gabe Newell and his company have heard our prayers: Steam has received a new video player that aims to improve many aspects. The result is quite positive.
Finally watch videos without issues
What has been improved? Valve has written a post about the new video player in the Steam news blog. In it, the innovations and improvements are listed:
- There is a new user interface that responds better to user input.
- The interface adapts better to the respective device, whether on PC, Steam Deck, or smartphone. Valve particularly mentions the improved display on the iPhone.
- Hovering over the timeline with the mouse shows thumbnails.
- There should be fewer interruptions when fast-forwarding and rewinding, and the transition to fullscreen should be seamless.
- There is now a better use of available internet bandwidth – the player automatically switches quality when your connection becomes weaker or stronger.
- The aspect ratio of the trailers is displayed correctly.
Looking at Steam now, one can already recognize a pleasant improvement of the player after just a few clicks. Everything feels a bit smoother and less cumbersome than with the old version. The makeover ensures that Steam appears a bit more modern now.
According to Valve, the update involved significant effort. Since the entire technology behind the player was changed, all trailers also had to be converted to the appropriate format.
According to Valve, this affected a whopping 400,000 video files – the blog implies that even the company was surprised by this. Valve also points out that not all trailers are available in high resolution. For older videos, they no longer have the original files and therefore have to rely on lower quality versions. This even affects their own game Portal, where you can happily count pixels in the trailer.
Have you already noticed the change? Feel free to let us know in the comments what you think and how the new player feels for you. Steam has been around for 22 years, quite a while now. The story of a very old feature is curious: A feature on Steam exists only because Valve had a problem in 2003
