Users will be prompted to upgrade their Steam client

Aug 29, 2014 06:29 GMT  ·  By

Valve has just released a new stable version of the Steam distribution platform, bringing numerous changes and improvements just a few days after another major update was made available for the client.

Valve usually goes through quite a few Beta versions before deciding to release a new stable client update, but this time the development cycle was very short. Not many features have been implemented. In fact, the current update seems to be more about bug fixing than anything else.

Unlike most of the applications on the Linux platform, which usually update themselves through repositories, Steam has an internal process. Not even Google Chrome, which updates all the time, has this kind of freedom on the Linux systems. In any case, when the Steam client is open, it will download the new version in the background and ask the users to upgrade when that download has been completed.

According to the changelog, some password entry fields were too short for existing passwords and they have been fixed, games are no longer being installed in a different Steam Library folder than the one indicated in the UI, trade links are no longer causing Steam web views to become unresponsive, an incorrect scrollbar skins no longer appear in web views, a client hang that occurred when viewing a Library page with a corrupted workshop thumbnail image has been fixed, and the some colors and other visual details have been adjusted after listening to the community feedback.

Also, handling of suspicious links in the chat text has been improved, the small-mode UI is now refreshing when new games are added to the library, some UI selection issues when switching between downloads and games views have been fixed, the client no longer crashes while playing peer-to-peer networking games, the client startup time and Steamworks API response time for games has been improved, and the client no longer crashes when installing games or apps with many small files.

As usual, there are a number of other minor changes and fixes implemented in the Steam client, pertaining to the Big Picture Mode, VR, In-Home Streaming, and more. You can find a more detailed list of changes in the official announcement.

If you don’t have the client, you can download the Steam for Linux installer from Softpedia. This is not the actual application, but a small tool provided by Valve that downloads the software and takes care of any dependencies.