Valve slideshow teases an upcoming Steam UI update

Valve's attendance at Indigo 2017 in the Netherlands last weekend was primarily a business-and-developers type thing. But images of slides displayed during a presentation by Valve's Alden Kroll that were posted in the Valvetime forum reveal some interesting things about Steam, and what Valve has planned for its future.

The promise of an "overall UI refresh and update" hearkens back to images discovered in February depicting a dramatically overhauled Steam interface. The presentation (or at least the slides we can see) didn't reveal any new images, nor was there any mention of when it might be rolled out. The presentation did hint at what's coming, including an option to "quickly launch right back into recent games" from your Library, and indicators of "activity" in games you own including events, updates, and "Friend activity." 

Game launch pages will be updated as well, with some sugar-sweet "rich display of content."   

A separate but also very interesting part of the presentation are the numbers revealed by the "Steam is Big and Growing" slide. It claims 14 million peak concurrent users, with 33 million daily active players and 67 million monthly active players. 

That's a tremendously impressive user count, but also relatively flat for the first half of 2017: Steam passed 14 million concurrent users for the first time ever in early January, and the Steam and Game Stats page indicates that the average continues to fluctuate between high-12 and mid-13 million. 

Andy Chalk

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.