Features you should know about Steam for PC
Steam is packed with tens of thousands of games and is extremely popular among PC gamers, so it’s no wonder that it now has over 100 million active users . This venerable store started in 2003 as a source for Valve to provide updates for first-party games, but it quickly expanded into a third-party game distribution tool in late 2005. You can use Steam either by visiting the official website directly or by installing the Steam program on your computer to manage and run games. This program has many features that most users probably don’t know about, and if you’re not convinced, let’s review some of these features that you need to know to get the most out of it.
Features of Steam for games
Manage storage spaces for your game library
Players have suffered a lot with the storage system and management of the games they download from Steam, so Valve decided in 2021 to add a new feature that allows players to easily and smoothly manage the storage space of the games they downloaded from the store. Previously, we had to go to the game path on our computers to know the storage capacity it occupies or to transfer it, thanks to this feature, the situation has changed for the better - as we explained in a previous topic how to transfer a game on Steam to another hard drive or partition, and it depended on this feature specifically.
Finally, we can see all the games we have downloaded from the store in one place and the space each game occupies, in addition to the ability to delete more than one game at the same time, all from one place. Not only that, the Storage Manager feature also allows you to know the space of the additional content ( DLC ) for each game, so you can delete it easily if you want. You can explore this feature by opening the Steam program and clicking on the program logo in the upper left corner, then choosing "Settings" from the drop-down menu, and when the settings window appears, go to the "Storage" section.
There is a simple note, which is that the Steam program only recognizes game files saved in the Steam Library folder, so if you want to delete or move a game through the Storage Manager feature, expect to find files related to this game in a location other than its original location, and this is the only drawback of this feature.
Try out the beta versions of the games.
Video games go through several stages before we see them in their final form, and the beta stage is one of the most important and advanced of these stages, where the game is almost ready and only a few final technical touches separate it from completion. Unlike the final product that everyone can try, the beta version is limited to a limited number of players whose opinions the developer is eager to know, and the Steam program gives you the opportunity to be one of them.
Of course, not all games have beta versions and the decision to make this version available or not is up to the developer or publisher, but if you know that a beta version of a game is available and you want to try it before everyone else, head immediately to Steam. Open the game library, right-click on the desired game and from the menu that appears, choose Properties, then from the window that appears, go to the Betas section and if the game actually has a beta version, you will be able to select it from the drop-down menu in front of "Beta Participation".
Specify what appears when the program runs.
By default, when you open the Steam store, the first thing that appears is the store interface filled with games that you can buy. This is obvious because Valve wants you to buy as many games as possible, and putting them right in front of you increases the chances of you buying them. But did you know that you can replace this interface with something more practical, such as a game library? Open the Steam program, click on the program logo in the upper left corner, then choose “Settings” from the drop-down menu. When the settings window appears, go to the Interface section.
After that, a page will open on the right with the phrase Start Up Location and next to it the word Store as the main interface for the program. Click on it and change it to whatever you want, starting from the Library to News or Friend Activity. You will find that your choice has become the main interface that you see first when you enter the store, and with this you can quickly access your game library or news or the Steam players community page, etc.
Recording games video
Steam has a Game Recording feature, which offers many features other than recording your gameplay highlights; everything will be done through the Steam interface, which will give you two main recording options; one starts recording as soon as you open the game and the other starts by pressing a specific shortcut. We have already explained how to enable the Game Recording feature in Steam, you can check it out if you are interested in trying the feature, knowing that it is still in beta, but you can easily try it if you go to the Steam settings on your computer.
Writing notes from within the game
Valve has released the biggest update to Steam in years, which includes many new features and improvements, including the Notes feature, which allows players to take notes directly from within the game, such as writing down tasks required to improve the level or your plan for progressing in the game, or even writing Cheats that allow you to bypass the restrictions of normal gameplay - such as GTA codes! - so that you can easily access them while playing thanks to the Steam Overlay interface.
All you have to do is press Shift + Tab together and then click the pen icon at the bottom to open the Notes window where you can write text, format it, and even attach images to the note. Notes are linked to your account and synced to any other computer you log into Steam from. Additionally, you can press the Pin button at the top to pin the Notes window so that it appears permanently on the screen while you play instead of having to call it up every time through the Steam Overlay.
Find out the full pricing history of a game.
You may wonder: What benefit will it bring me when I know the pricing history of games on the Steam store? The answer is simply, dear reader, that this thing may save you a lot of money; sometimes the store tempts us with very large discounts for a game to make us think that if we miss this opportunity, we will not find it again, only to discover later that this discount was not worth it and that it was usual for this game.
This feature may not be present in the Steam application directly, but it is present in the database, so in order to see the pricing history of any game on Steam, we will rely on the SteamDB or Steam Database website, which is an independent (unofficial) website that provides legal access to a huge database that includes in-depth details about any game in the Steam game library and can be used for many things in general. So, after visiting the site, search for the name of the game whose pricing history you want to know, then click on Price History from the options on the left of the screen and you will see the game's pricing history and all the changes that have occurred in the price, including discounts.
Install more than one game with one click
Sometimes you want to install more than one game on Steam, and most likely you will want to do this after downloading the program on a new computer. You may think that this option is not available and that the usual classic method of going to each game individually is the only way to install games, but fortunately this is not true.
Using the Steam program on your device, you can install more than one game at the same time by selecting all the games you want to install from your library (by holding down the Shift key and selecting the games with the left mouse button). After you have finished selecting all the games you want to install, stand on one of them and press the left mouse button, and from the pop-up menu choose Install selected and the program will start downloading and installing the selected games one by one.
Customize the game page from the library.
Every game in the Steam game library comes with its official cover art and logo displayed on its library page, but one of the great things about Steam is that it lets you easily customize these elements. All you have to do is click on the game from your library and then right-click on the large rectangular space above the PLAY button. Then choose “Set Custom Background” to customize the cover art background, “Set Custom Logo” to customize the game logo with any other logo you have on your machine, or “Adjust Logo Position” to adjust the logo position and move it to the most appropriate place.