Get a glimpse of the long-awaited Steam redesign

A Steam redesign has been simmering away at Valve for a few years, with only the occasional tweets from employees and leaks confirming its existence. Back in January, Valve put together a gathering for game developers, during which it gave a presentation on Steam and, apparently, the redesign. SteamDB creator Pavel Djundik has posted a slide on Twitter that allegedly comes from that presentation.

Just remembered that Valve's been working on a Steam redesign for years now. Here's a picture from a presentation in January.It certainly doesn't look like the SteamU leak from 2 years ago: https://t.co/KjoRK8OnLA pic.twitter.com/2fG2acIIz8November 25, 2018

It’s a bit of a jumble, a collage of Rainbow Six Siege screenshots surrounding a drowned out update post. It’s busy and hard to parse, but it’s also been cropped, so we’re not seeing the whole thing. It bears some resemblance to the publisher and developer homepages that Valve introduced in June, so perhaps Valve’s already started slipping in ideas from the redesign.

Notably, it looks nothing like the leaked images that were discovered in the Steam client beta back in 2017. Those images also showed off the top bar, featuring new sections for comics and TV, and a flashy, bespoke game page for Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. Who knows what it will look like in another year?

Valve’s also developing its first new game in ages since 2016’s Vive mini-game compilation, The Lab. With Artifact on its way, Valve says that it’s in a place where it can invest and focus on games again. "Artifact is the first of several games that are going to be coming from us,” Gabe Newell said. “So that's sort of good news. Hooray! Valve's going to start shipping games again."

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Fraser is the UK online editor and has actually met The Internet in person. With over a decade of experience, he's been around the block a few times, serving as a freelancer, news editor and prolific reviewer. Strategy games have been a 30-year-long obsession, from tiny RTSs to sprawling political sims, and he never turns down the chance to rave about Total War or Crusader Kings. He's also been known to set up shop in the latest MMO and likes to wind down with an endlessly deep, systemic RPG. These days, when he's not editing, he can usually be found writing features that are 1,000 words too long or talking about his dog.