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[Yoink]

Now, I'm sure most of you computer whizzes (the ones that bother with Steam, at least) have fixed this yourselves already, but for the rest of us I want to share this simple, quick and easy video detailing how to revert certain changes of Steam's terrible recent update, whilst also adding an option to block future updates.

Even I found it nice and easy to implement, and I am comparatively shit with computers. So, have at it!
Leeson - How to revert to the old Steam Library UI   

[nenjin]

how to revert certain changes of Steam's terrible recent update....

*blinks*

*checks*

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF--

Edit

Of course the only section in that atrocity happening on the right side of the library that can't be deleted or hidden is.......updates. The place where they can try to sell you more shit. I knew my games updated by what I downloaded, and I'd read the patch notes.

At LEAST it's not cramming in updates for games I don't have installed.

On the one hand, I kind of understand some of what's going on here. They've completely redone what you see displayed for a game when you click on it in your library. They've unified the game community page, and news page, in to one thing. There's a whole deep web of stuff now that it's easier to get to than going to a game's community or store page.

And they want to emulate a "game shelf" by letting you create custom line ups of games, with the added benefit to the developer that it all now looks more corporate. Instead of a tiny icon representing a game, it now has a big colorful spread with activity and community driven content and yadda yadda yadda.

But on the downside:
-It's a fucking resource hog. My game launcher doesn't need to get more memory intensive. I'm not spending my time hanging out on Steam.
-It stinks of mobile. There's no escaping that reality today, but the fact this wasn't optional kind of annoys me.
-I didn't need my library to be this kind of visual mess. The stripped down, lean look of the old UI suited me way more. I'm looking at the rows and rows of games I own and somehow I feel like I'm browsing things to buy. Kind of a sickening feeling really.
-This doesn't really feel like it's serving users' interests. This feels like it's aimed at publishers and game makers, with some cute features thrown in to dress it up as a fun customization thing.

For some reason I think of Discord when I look at this. It kind of feels like it's a response to Discord's recent foray in to the "game platform" market.

Seriously, why would I build "shelves of games" when I have quick, (previously) minimalist list on to left to scroll through instead. So I can ogle the majesty of my Steam library? Right click the Steam icon in the Windows system tray shows me the last five games I played, and I can launch them from there. I have exactly zero need for an entire full screen scrollable bar of game covers to do that.

There's so much overlap in the way Steam links things together in the UI that it already seemed like a tangled mess of your profile, new feed of things your friends are doing, your library and the game community hub. (Not to mention forums way off to the side, the product page, etc....) And then they drop this monstrosity in the middle of all that.

Also on the link above, I noped out when it said "here download over 500+ files of the old Steam UI from this link." And even if that turns out to be 100% legit, you still have to disable all updates to the Steam client, which isn't feasible to me. Also the UI seemed to have some major issues, like parts of it not loading after dropping in the old files.

So I'll wait and see what Valve's response is. My guess though is they aren't going to make the old UI optional, because this UI wasn't built with our interests in mind.

[Yoink]

It actually works fine for me, not sure why it looked weird in the video. Even the store etcetera works.   
But yeah, I don't understand who this was supposed to be aimed at, apart from maybe tablet users who are used to a mobile-style layout. Even that doesn't really explain it, this is just so aesthetically unpleasant! Companies that push shitty updates like this never seem to make the new look optional, which is what really makes me mad.

For now, I can still play games through the proper library with this fix. If Steam goes and disables the workaround somehow rather than reverting the update, well... I guess it'll be time to try one of those much-maligned other game launchers.

[itisnotlogical]

I don't get what the problem is. I was tired of straining my eyes picking through a list of 100+ ten-pixel-tall labels to find the one game I was looking for. Now the last few games I played get big icons on the front page, so I don't have to go hunting for them. Even the little scroll list on the left side shows the program icon so it's a bit clearer there, too.

I don't know what the performance hubbub is about either. My computer is dogshit and if anything the new UI runs better. Everything is more responsive and loads faster. I don't have to wonder any more if Steam's crashing or just choking on the store page.

I mean uhhhh, new thing bad.

[Iduno]

I don't get what the problem is. I was tired of straining my eyes picking through a list of 100+ ten-pixel-tall labels to find the one game I was looking for. Now the last few games I played get big icons on the front page, so I don't have to go hunting for them. Even the little scroll list on the left side shows the program icon so it's a bit clearer there, too.

The old system worked fine with my old 17" screen from a decade ago. My new large screen is capable of showing 3 games at a time, because Steam assumes you're running 8K or higher.

Now, I'm sure most of you computer whizzes (the ones that bother with Steam, at least) have fixed this yourselves already, but for the rest of us I want to share this simple, quick and easy video detailing how to revert certain changes of Steam's terrible recent update, whilst also adding an option to block future updates.

You're doing excellent work. Let us know if there's also an easy way to see Valve' employees all tried at the Hague for their crimes.

[itisnotlogical]

The old system worked fine with my old 17" screen from a decade ago. My new large screen is capable of showing 3 games at a time, because Steam assumes you're running 8K or higher.

? ? ? ? ? ? ?



 My screen's about 16", not even 1080p and I can see 24 at a time easily.

[NullForceOmega]

Stop showing us that hideous garbage.  It's fucking repulsive.

The link in the video is legit, I reverted this morning and am enjoying a simple functional list UI that doesn't eat literally SIX TIMES the RAM.

Edit: AND lag for up to ten seconds when I switch pages, OR crash inexplicably because I was reading something in the Steam Forums for Kenshi and when I tried to go back to the library it just black-screened when I happened to mouse over the disgusting animated goddamn trading cards.

[Yoink]

You're doing excellent work. Let us know if there's also an easy way to see Valve' employees all tried at the Hague for their crimes.

Thank you for the kind words, but alas it is beyond my powers to bring justice to an unjust world.



@itisnotlogical: AAGH c'mon dude I had just about repressed those memories. Now I need a fresh bottle of eye bleach.
It's kinda like the Netflix layout but they somehow managed to make it look 5-10x worse. It'd be kind of impressive if it wasn't so nasty.

[itisnotlogical]

I shall repent for my horrendous casual sheeple non-gamer opinions. Please send me a flip phone, a boxed copy of Half-Life 2, and installation discs for Windows XP so that I my cleanse myself of the sins of "not experiencing any of the problems described" and "liking the new thing better than the old thing."

[nenjin]

In the software world it's called "Moving people's cheese."

And then burying that cheese under a mountain of visuals.

[smjjames]

...

I actually kind of like the new steam library look....

[BurnedToast]

By all accounts the OP's link works fine and is safe.

However the same guy made a better version with links to download the files directly from steam's content servers so you can be sure it's clean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjN6-e3nlPE

I expect in a week or two we get some kind of "fix" that makes the old version throw up an error and stop working, forcing you to upgrade but at least you can enjoy the superior client for a little while longer.

Alternately, you can put steam://open/minigameslist in your web browser or add it to your steam launch icon to get small mode back without changing any of the files, though you have to redo it every time you open the client up into large mode.

I shall repent for my horrendous casual sheeple non-gamer opinions. Please send me a flip phone, a boxed copy of Half-Life 2, and installation discs for Windows XP so that I my cleanse myself of the sins of "not experiencing any of the problems described" and "liking the new thing better than the old thing."

It's fine that you like it, the real problem that makes this disgusting is that they are forcing it on everyone. How is removing options that people like and use an "upgrade"? Maintaining small mode and/or a "lite" mode that worked like the old library would be utterly trivial for a billion dollar company like valve, they just don't want to for some reason (hmmm I wonder why...)

Say "OH GOSH EVERYONE I LIKE IT, IT'S TOTALLY FINE, YOU JUST MUST HATE NEW THINGS HURR DURR" when people have legitimate complaints, in a thread specifically for people who don't like it is really not productive and you shouldn't be surprised when people call you out on it.

[George_Chickens]

I don't even care about the way it looks. There's no need for Steam to use more RAM than most of my games on it. Moreover, it doesn't even work on my computer. I'm glad that, for now, there is a fix.

[NullForceOmega]

I really was going to put up with it initially.  Then I looked for the workshop, which had previously been prominently displayed right near the top of the page before, with three trending mods featured.  And what I saw was flatly offensive to me, they moved it halfway down the page, shoved it off to the right side, and reduced it to only display a single featured mod.  THEN, it crashed.  I have never had Steam itself crash.  I have had other programs cause Steam to crash, I have had bloated memory usage from trying to listen to music on Youtube, browse Steam, and check some reviews online simultaneously cause my whole desktop to become unresponsive, but never in the eight years that I have had Steam has it ever crashed on its own before.  AND THEN as the final cherry on top, I saw what it was doing to my RAM.  The library has no right to be using an entire gig of RAM while idle, and I don't know how much VRAM, the entire job of the page is to present my games in an easy to use format that lets me manage the software, not lag to death trying to render dozens of interactive UI elements.

So, like Nexus gets adblocked because they either don't or won't make sure their ads aren't being resource hogs, Steam gets reverted.  I have far too much shit to deal with in my life for my only source of entertainment to be bottlenecked by badly optimized garbageware.

[Mephisto]

The new UI breaks scrolling in the left pane. It'll scroll a few games and then stop, as if it absolutely must retrieve the images before allowing me to scroll further or something. As someone with a lot of games who occasionally scrolls through them, this is a dumb change.