14 DAY TRIAL // Valve has released a new major update for its Steam client and the developers seem poised to fix as many problems as possible in the shortest amount of time.
The devs from Valve usually have a large number of Beta versions out the door before committing to the launch of a new stable release. In the case of the latest one, the stable iteration arrived pretty soon and the makers of the Steam client didn't wait too long.
This normally happens when an important change or fix is made and the situation is dire enough that they really need to get the new version ready for upgrade. Just two of the improvements and modifications made in this release can qualify for this situation, but we'll get to that in a minute.
What's new in the latest Steam stable update
You might think that this is just a distribution platform and many people use it as such, but it's actually a very sophisticated piece of software that incorporates all kinds of functionalities, like a music player, the ability to stream games to another PC that has a different operating system, a special design for users who have big screen TVs, and much more.
The fact that it comes with so many features is great, but it also means that a lot more things can go wrong and that it needs numerous patches. As it stands right now, the fixes and improvements for the client arrive constantly, regardless of the devs' decision to add new features. There is no precise schedule for the new updates, so it's hard to keep track of them. They might arrive once a month, sometimes even faster than that.
The developers have fixed a problem with "Invalid Depot Config," which was an error that affected multiple users who were running the game on the same computer. Usually, this is not an issue, but this particular regression was really important and needed to be corrected. Another important addition to the client is the support for Mantle graphics API, which has been put to good use in the latest Civilization game that was just launched (Beyond Earth).
Some changes in the latest Steam client are only for Linux users, although there is nothing really worthy of attention, with the exception of the controller bindings for Xbox One controllers, which are now displayed and used correctly (Xbox One controllers are supported by the latest Linux kernel).
You can also download the Steam installer from Softpedia, if you don't already have the application.