This will not be tolerated, Valve. So they are building a new video recording system into Steam. Great! But as a result, the desktop version of Steam has now lost what I consider to be the second most important button, right behind the big green Play. Valve is hiding my screenshots, and I cannot stress enough how much it is sending me.
There might be some kind of PTSD at play here. I once had a MacBook Air and I loved that laptop. Brilliant piece of hardware: no Windows laptop ever had such a good trackpad. It weighed nothing. Battery life was killer in its day. But Man There were a few things about Mac OS that I couldn’t stand, most notably Apple’s penchant for hiding all my files, as if the sight of “.jpg” would instantly infect me with the bubonic plague. If I wanted to view the pictures from my phone in the Photos app, it was a breeze, but finding the actual files included cave exploration in a terrible folder sequence.
One of my strongest beliefs about computers is that I don’t need to search through everything just to find a few files, like “Users > Wes > .temp > astuvkcaqcf > 4748949585”.
Maybe Apple has gotten better in recent years – I have no idea. But seeing Valve go down the same path, Now makes me want to pick up my PC and walk it straight into the ocean. I live about two miles from the ocean, which is a long way to carry a 30 pound desktop, but the good news is that if I hold on to it, I’ll sink to the bottom of the ocean where Steam’s screenshot interface can’t touch me anymore.
For many years, the Screenshot window has contained an almighty button, a simple means of easy, efficient digital scrapbooking. Clicking it opens a Windows Explorer window with all the screenshots you’ve ever taken for that single game using Steam. Simple! Its other features have always been far less useful to me: I rarely want to upload a screenshot to the Steam cloud because I don’t post on the Steam forums. I don’t need to use Steam’s screenshot management window because when I take a screenshot, I just want to upload the damn .jpg or a whole handful of them to this website.
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In Steam’s latest beta, which clearly introduces a simplified interface that prioritizes the Steam Deck, the ability to jump to that folder with a click is gone, replaced by a share button. You used to be able to right-click on a single image and jump to the file location that way, too. That’s gone, too. Valve now wants you to stay in Steam for all of that stuff, encouraging a trend where all computing happens in one app, with little notice of the computer it’s installed on.
Has there been anything in the last decade that has plagued computer interfaces more than the Share button? It’s the ultimate “clicking this doesn’t actually do anything, but it opens a list of other things you can do that used to have their own buttons” piece of confusing UI design. The Share button now lets me click “Save Image” in sequence on Steam and choose where on my computer I want to save a screenshot.
But it’s already on my computer, Valve. Where is it? Where did you put it? WHERE ARE MY FILES!!
The old UI will remain on the non-beta branch of Steam for now, but I must implore Valve: bring back your second-best button. Don’t make Steam another victim of the era of obfuscation in interface design. Sometimes the old ways are the best. I’d even accept a return to skeuomorphism if that was the only way to get back the simple click action I crave. Animate your screenshot window by rolling it up like a filing cabinet full of file folders if that’s what it takes. Just give me back my button!
