Valve Has a UI Problem

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We’re now 7 years into being forced to use the godawful new Steam design that upped its RAM usage to a staggering 600MB when the client isn’t even open. All I wanted was to play Left 4 Dead 2 in peace, until the new Steam came along and began crashing my PC from simply opening the in-game overlay. Valve did the impressive and turned what was a basic game launcher into a virus-like Chromium shell that literally required a remedy from Nvidia in order to somewhat bring it under control. (See the changelog for NVIDIA Studio Driver 581.57)

People who used Steam as nothing more than a game launcher had (and still have) a huge percentage of their PC resources going to Steam alone, for no reason. In any other case, the users would call it... bloatware, spyware, a virus, a bitcoin miner... but I guess it's different when Valve does it. 👍

UI has never been Valve’s strong suit. Look no further than Left 4 Dead 2’s UI, which is incapable of showing any info in the games you join. It may be modded. It may have pings up to +200. It may be both. The billion dollar company fails to indicate to customers that their gameplay experience may be entirely different than what they paid for. I guess it's different when Valve does it. 👍

On the other side of the pond, a YouTuber named Zesty Jesus has been - relentlessly, for years - asking Valve to just bring some sense to TF2’s abandoned matchmaker. Stop shutting a giant door in player’s faces and just let them play the goddamn game.

But it’s okay, It’s Valve, and nobody cares. Even under Gabe’s wings, they still commit one sin like every other company: just doing things.

We need a new UI. Why? Who knows. Let’s just do it. Whoops, now you’ve fucked up the flow of everyone who used said thing, and one small but incredibly useful thing is now gone because our data showed not enough people used it henceforth it’s useless. The frog remains stationary as it slowly boils in the pot.

What Now??? - The “New” Workshop

The workshop is now workslop.

It's too flashy. Too much space being used. Smells like vibe-code (that hover animation when mousing over an item looks very similar). It's stylistically inconsistent with the rest of the platform, even the new library. Another joke to the pile.

It is said that Gabe once worked at Microsoft, and we can tell. He certainly practices that UI inconsistency nightmare still present and unchanging in the Windows 11 desktop environment.

Such are the ways of DERP.