In my experience, most people dont know about this feature. While in your library, you can go to "advanced filtering" for searching through your games. In that menu, you can input the names of people on your friends list to the filter games you have in common, but unlike the long used "compare games" feature, you can put in more than 1 person's user name, making it filter to games only each person on that list owns. It makes for very easy deciding on what game to play when you have a group of friends online, but didnt plan in advance what to do.
impressive! Still sounds like too much work to justify socializing. I'm not looking to "go far" I'm just looking to "go fast". Too many good games to get stuck on the treadmill of obsessing over just one lol
@@chocolatehusky because installing steam is more convenient? RTSS Takes like 5 sec to install and you never have to worry about anything after that. Works with all games. Don't need to add non-steam to any library, and it has fps limiter scanline sync, all kinds of tracking for every component in your system.
A minor correction: The limitation of Family Sharing is not that games can't be played by multiple people concurrently. This limitation applies to the library, not a game... If someone's playing game X and you start game Y their session of game X will end after a couple of minutes.
@@whateverman2137 This works, but I will add that the recipient of the games has to be online. Content that has been shared to you is inaccessible offline.
@@whateverman2137 You can also use this trick to play some multiplayer games with your friends, without them having to buy the game. Though some games will have the library code in the game itself (or they will put some sort of CD-key like feature to steam) and won't let the other person play if the game is online for both parties (on their servers anyway, stuff like VPNs to directly connect over a "LAN" still works).
I remember the days when this limitation was not a thing, good times. I would just share or receive games and as long as we were not playing the same game it was perfectly fine.
I swear this changed in the last 5 years. As in, you used to play multiple games from a single library at once. My brother could be playing a game while I was playing another. I don't know why they would change it to the whole library when the keys are for separate games that could be used simultaneously if you weren't using steam. ):
Steam Remote Play Together is rather underrated in its own right. For games that normally have only local multiplayer and no online mode, you'll be able to stream it to a friend over the network so they can play the game with you, and vice versa. It streams the video to the second, and their input is separately sent back to the first player.
My friends and I use Remote Play Together a lot. Just make sure that the host has a good enough upload capacity. My 10mbps is only good enough to stream to one player without lots of dropped frames. (could be that I am on wifi though)
Remote play is good for playing a game with friends. But if you want to full control from another machine steam link is better. For example you can 100% mirror your steam deck to your computer, not just a single game. That means emulators, desktop mode, everything works
Unfortunately, Valve puts remote play availability up to the developer, for some games with local multiplayer you must use an external application to do it.
For Family Sharing, if you put your steam into Offline Mode you will be able to play your games locally installed on your computer and your kid/family can use your library.
@@outatimetv iirc you could at one point even play games that someone shared with you whilst you were offline and they online but that got patched after a while so now only the original owner can play them in offline mode
As a workaround for family sharing limitations, you can usually run steam in offline mode yourself in order to have someone use your library at the same time, and some games will still let you play multiplayer this way, which is how my partner and I were able to play stardew valley together with only one purchase
The new steam beta has a bunch of new features like an in-game notepad, accessible from the steam overlay, that can sync your notes between devices. Great for chucking in-game passcodes, number combinations, or other info in that you might forget between play sessions.
@@petrsvugr450 The new ui has been introduced to the steam beta client almost 2 weeks ago, they only covered the features already available in the stable release otherwise it wouldve confused some people. Rip custom skins, ive been using metro for years but the new in-game UI is just too good
The family share feature reminded me of playing oldies like Age of Empires II on a CD. My brother and I would load the game on one PC, then with the game in memory, pop out the disk and load it on another PC, then play over LAN with one empty CD ROM. It was like magic.
Hahah oh yeah in high school I used to carry a USB with Warcraft 3 TFT and the latest DotA map installed, it turned the PC lab into a 3v3 LAN party real quick
there are a couple of fun new features about family sharing though, 1 two accounts can't play the same game at the same time, and 2 publishers can opt out of family sharing whenever they want, this means you usually can't play games with your family/friends through family sharing, and on many AAA games it is simply not available
@@XDbored1 True, but if two people are playing single player games with no need of internet connection, one of them could simply disconnect their computer from any network and Steam won't find out. I've done this so my girlfriend and I can play Hogwarts Legacy at the same time with no trouble.
I bought the Steam Link hardware back when it came out. I've still got it to this day, and continue to use it as an easy solution for streaming my PC games from my home computer to the much larger television in my livingroom. I was rather surprised when Valve stopped making them, as I found the device to be extremely useful for more than just steam games, as it wasn't hard to access the desktop and then use it as a remote link for virtually anything you want to do on your PC from another room. It was a great little piece of tech that I would not complain about seeing an updated version of.
Don't you guys have problems with input lag? I tried Steam Link with my PC+TV and lag is so big, most games are unplayable. Both devices are connected with Ethernet with 100Mbit/s port (on TV) and 1Gbps on router and PC, so LAN is not an issue.
@@NaoNakashima mine works great, latency, never really noticed anything bad except when my router died. But obviously that wasn't my link fault. I am also running it at 2K on my PC.
There's a new feature in the beta version that just released this week that I am pumped for. Notepad. In game steam overlay note-taking system... Even has the ability to stay on screen while you play the game so that you don't have to keep alt tabbing out of the game to check your own notes or keep a pen and paper set of notes on hand.
Usefull if don't play the game frequently and want to take notes where left or something. Also maybe writing up crafting recipes. Or simple calculating stuff
@@eniff2925puzzle games, strategy games, games that are story-based and you don't play that often... Pretty much any game if you're a reviewer, the list goes on.
During covid we would use the "filter games to ones you and a friend both own" feature now baked right into the library view, before you had to go to your friends profile to access this info. Later we found out that one of our LAN party members who moved to work for steam actually made this feature and when we found out and told him how much we used a lot it he was very excited!
To save everyone time, almost every "hidden" delisted game shown in the links in the description here was delisted because it's a multiplayer game or MMO and the servers are no longer up. So there's really no point in installing any of them. Codename Gordon is the exception, it does indeed work, but you're better off downloading the modded version from moddb as the actual flash game has been extracted and is now usable on Linux etc. too without the dodgy links still being active.
Streets of Kamurocho is a game Sega made based on Streets of Rage 2 using Yakuza characters. That's also delisted, but still downloadable if you want a short Streets of Rage parody game to play.
Another short, free, "joke" game was "8-bit Bayonetta", released as an April Fool's joke... which turned out to presage an actual and very good PC port of the first game. It was delisted basically just to avoid confusing people searching for the real game.
Yes, some JP publishers still release games which block non-JP players as the targeting customer are probably JP only, e.g. Koei's JP horseracing simulation game Winning Post(I think Koei need to unlock it as Umamusume makes a lot of fans of JP horseracing in other Asian countries like me)
One useful thing that might have been worth a mention is, some of those older early 2000's games, if you got it on disk and if Steam allows it. You can put the serial code from the disk into Steam for a free digital copy of that game. It doesn't work with all games but I still think this is a useful feature. I recently bought Medieval II Total War on disk this way, because buying the disk turned out to be a cheaper way of getting that game instead of buying direct from Steam.
gee golly i can use my collector's edition M2TW on my laptop without the hassle of an external disk drive and some compatibility crap? sign me right up!
works for all total war games and over 800 other games i know as i have around that many non steam games in the program but most are not installed oh and also if they ended up adding a HD remake or addon to the game it will 99% of the time count your non steam version as one that is able to get the free upgraded version for free
WAIT A MINUTE, can it work with games that have been taken down from steam too? I have a disk of Unreal II and I wanted to play it for so long, but I don't have a disk player in my pc and the game has been taken down from the store, so if I can find the serial code, could I be able to get a digital copy?
A video comparing steam's new local transfer feature to a proper cache server setup (like LTT used for the LAN party recently) could be pretty interesting
Already tested that. Depends on how fast PC is. If you have gigabit network and internet it's actually faster to download it from Internet. Your PC must compress it back in order to send it to secondary PC, local steamcache have it already compressed so it's much faster. My old PC was able to get max 200mbit , direct internet 800mbit
@@jirijirka9828 So I guess it's not really super useful, tho if you're on a metered connection or limited by X gigs/month downloads, saving like 50-100GB or sometimes even more of downloading could be extremely helpful. So it's still a neat feature, imo. Allowing you to transfer big games on your own network quite easily.
@@Ztygs Its very usefull, when you have slow OR metered internet. When you have 1Gbit/s internet or local steamcache, it can actualy be much slower due to need to pack the game to small compressed chunks to be able to send it to secondary PC. But original question was if steamcache is faster = it is by a lot! If you have slow internet and game is already cached there ;-)
Another nice steam feature is custom images. You can set a custom image for any game tile (both portrait and landscape for the last played game) and it now lets you set a custom background and logo on the game page. That feature also works with non steam games (which means that you can make them look like a regular steam game on your library) and it also works with animates png images!
Which one of these secret steam features do you find most useful? Let us know below! Buy a SABRENT M.2 NVMe SSD Portable Enclosure: geni.us/BPyzAd Buy an UGREEN M.2 NVMe SSD Portable Enclosure: geni.us/iGzEE Buy an ASUS ROG STRIX Arion M.2 NVMe SSD Portable Enclosure: geni.us/U2BZ Purchases made through some store links may provide some compensation to Linus Media Group.
Btw, the UGREEN and ASUS ROG links are the same, links to the ROG unit. Might want to update that. Same error can be found in the video description as well.
I cannot emphasize enough how underrated Steam Input is. Whenever I play a game on controller that requires aiming, I set the aim button to also enable gyro controls on my PS5 controller for fine-tune adjustments. Super useful for other things too, such as setting radial menus on the middle trackpad for additional buttons.
@@zbastian You can make is to that the menu opens up as soon as you touch it, then drag to which option you want and it will select on release! Or press it, and then point and press again to choose. The options are pretty much endless. You can even make another button do something else while pressing another specific button!
Absolutely true. I built a cabinet for playing pinball (FX3, Arcade, Dreams, ...) and getting the controls on windows right was a huge mess. With Steam Input it was really easy, I didnt bind keys to it but like a Xbox Controller remapping, so that playing the games is nearly the same in any pinball game (which is not when using keyboard controls)
@@zbastian The radial menus are part of a suite of steam input options that allow you to build entirely custom OSDs and link various keys/controller inputs/macros to them. It's insanely good. Radials, lists, user definable placement, icons, colours, naming etc. It's pretty fucking fantastic.
Please do a follow up video! This was so useful and I didn't know about most of these features! I like using the library filling system to make my own categories for sorting games.
I'm particularly fond of "dynamic" collections. Currently, I have four: * Unplayed (for when I feel like trying something new) * VR (for when I eventually get an HMD lol, been waiting on Lynx R1 to come out so I can be 100% sure it's not a scam but it keeps getting delayed) * Strategy (this collection is also filtered to only include installed games) * Shooter (also installed only) I made my Action/RPG collection static though because I didn't like how much overlap it had with Strategy IIRC. I wish those were better defined as separate categories (in English-speaking gaming culture, not just in Steam).
There was a time where steam was consuming 1GB of ram for absolutely no reason without a steam window even being opened, or having any downloads so I set it to launch in small if needed along with some other tweaks and dropped way more in RAM usage,
I've been using the Small Mode for years and years. It's much cleaner and less background-bloaty than regular mode. Family sharing, cool. Didn't know about that.
For the Linux, Proton and SteamDeck Users: Enable shader pre-caching on the Steam Settings. It will improve performance by pre-caching and pre-compiling all required shaders for your games, and reduce the hiccups when some new shader pops in at your game Specially useful if you use DXVK(like a normal Linux user, or a normal SteamDeck user)
@@matz289 iirc it recompiles if a game gets an update, but don't quote me on that. I must say I don't ever remember my pc being particularly sluggish when precompiling however.
For the remote download, you can also specify WHICH library you install the game to. Which is particularly useful for those of us with multiple drives for different purposes. It's great! Even works flawlessly for Linux! \o/
You can stream the entire desktop, even though remote play is limited to games. Simply add an external program such as notepad to your library and stream that. Once it's streaming, minimize the window and you're good to go.
All these features are the reason Steam will stay on top for a long time. Rather than just doing the minimum, they develop all these features to even make non-steam games better, Steam is also one of the few game launchers that actually works (Not like the trash that Ubisoft and EA try to shove down our throats)
True, also their friendly approach when it comes to their connection to the users/community. They seem to really listen to what people want and actually do give your money back if a game for exmaple didnt function properly (whitout having to go trough a long process). This and them having one of the fastest ui's (also while its pritty simple) its just the goto launcher for me!
Steam's exellent UI is one of the main reasons why it's the best, other launchers feel like slow upscaled mobile apps while Steam feels like a regular desktop app built for usability, you can have hundreds of games and the UI would still remain snappy
I'm sad that there isn't real competition in this space. Uplay hasn't worked the last few times I tried to play Rainbowsix Siege. I don't even remember what game I was playing on Origin. It at least worked. Epic games I only got to make a new Rocket League account. Microsoft store works fine.
I remember using Steam's inbuilt music player when downloaded music was more normal. Being able to control your music whilst ingame (especially if you didn't have media keys) was a godsend. It sounded better than Windows Media Player too of I remember correctly, so I actually used it as my default for awhile.
Oh yes that is so cool and it is so game friendly with the popup and easy in-game controls. I remember the struggle with windows media player flickering in the corner above the full screen game and had to make them windowed to see the popup which I wanted to see and do quick control. Of course it always made the game either minimize to taskbar when clicked upon or would disappear just when I tabbed out or not show up at all. It had it's own life and moods I swear. Holy crap I am becoming frustrated remembering it. Hope I'm giving some nostalgia to others with that. Will not explain steam music, long story short, shift+tab and easy to scan,responsive music folders without copying. Absolute godsent. This is why I love Valve. It's a bunch of geeks with the same problems. They love what they do and we love them for it. Gabe Newell is my spirit animal.
Steam cmd has been very useful for making servers with your friends and can be ran on the same computer playing the game or another one entirely dedicated to the server. Great for games where you want to leave the server open but don’t want your character to die while away and people can come and go as they please
@@blitzrigen in the past I have used it for games like V-Rising and Valhiem but it’s not limited to only those games. A variety of games can be used on steam cmd for personal servers.
@@cnr_0778 Gyro controls have been around for a long time, but Steam Input refined them. Even on the Switch where almost all of the shooters are expected to support gyro controls it isn't as good as Steam Input gyro using a Switch Pro Controller.
Steam remote play is such a lifesaver if you have a good PC but want to play a multiplayer game with friends who don't. Just create a virtual machine, on there log in with the friend's steam account and if you start any game, they will be able to use steam remote play to stream it to themselves. Then just run the same game with your account on your host. This helped me immensely when I wanted to play CIV 6 with someone whose laptop was basically a toaster.
HUGE thank you for the Controller Layout heads up! It actually works on older games that only use DirectInput to adapt them to Xbox input. I just was able to run Xbox controls, with trigger throttle and brake, on Monster Truck Madness 2, a game from 1998! Literal game changer.
Yeah, Steam Input I swear should be universal for everything nowadays IMO. It's rly nice having controller like binds being able to do just as much as KB/M when it boils down to it. I've actually got a template for MMOs that allows up to 4 hotbars of 12 hotkeys each to be bound using 1-3 buttons each, with one needing 3-4 buttons to activate, but they are super easy to remember and reach compared to doing them all on your KB and/or Mouse
I know this probably wouldn't make the cut for a Steam Features video, but I really do appreciate how user-friendly and straightforward Proton is. I used to game on PC but don't much anymore and that's one of the reasons I was able to justify switching to Linux, but knowing that I can still play some (most) of my old library is pretty comforting. I also feel like, with that compatibility layer in between the OS and the game, I've had fewer issues than when I was just jumping to newer and newer versions of windows (and getting more and more compatibility problems for old games).
the only two things keeping me away from Linux are League Of Legends(I play a lot with my friends) and the fucking wireless card in my laptop which works like a potato in almost every distro i have tried.
@@qwertychouskie7815 Thanks for the recommendation, I will buy it and check it and if it works I will try to migrate once and for all since W10 has its days numbered, W11 is garbage and I don't like how Microsoft plans to put AI and ads in W12.
@@segiraldovi Awesome! Just double-check that the old card and new card use the same connector before you order. If your laptop is around 2013ish or older, it may use a Mini PCIe connector instead, in which case the Intel 7260HMW with Mini PCIe connector should work (not the 7260HMW BN, 7260HMW NB, or the 7260HMW AC, these variants may have weird behavior on Linux).
Controller support on Steam is really one of the best features of it! I couldn't use my Nintende Switch Pro controller without it. I would recommed using it for anyone who plays games on pc with controllers. You can even launch other launchers such as Epic through steam to use your controller settings on games there. It really is so great.
@@dgamefather Oh thank you so much. My only problem with Steam Input was using it with Microsoft Store/Gamepass games. And GlosSI seems to fix that problem.
Some that I use frequently. Depot downloading, for previous title updates. Going to account data to see pretty much everything you've ever done, like sale game participation, comments you've reported, demos played in next fests, etc. Steam can easily show you where a games files are. The feature to add and remove options when you right click the icon.
@@brandonhoover2120 fair, yet it does have lots to do with what he pays them. IF the editor is better at most other editors, than said editor should demand a higher wage, or LTT risk losing said awesome editor. Quality of labor should not be an afterthought and not a black and white, "did you do the thing today? Yes! Great, you get to keep your job for another day" attitude. Not saying LTT does this, but you obviously think this way.
It depends on the game, but some games that have regular new content updates that break savegames will make old versions of the game available via the betas tab in the game config (which is itself worth a note). That way you can keep playing in an older patch version until you're done with your playthrough. Paradox interactive is a studio that really heavily uses this feature across most of their titles, and I wish more developers did it.
@@SerumCRM114 Devs need to support it, but I don't know how much work it is. It shouldn't be much, as you should only have to tell steam, add the beta, with that name, as that "file"
The steam input tip is really next level. Its already lovely on the deck, but on pc thats also so helpful. The local network transfer also is really helpful, and surprised me on my steam deck when it suddenly didn’t say downloading haha.
Family sharing is incredible get a few friends together and bam, you library just tripled in size Also, if the host puts steam in offline mode, you can both play the game at the same time!
@@rafatvaz This won't work if you both want to play a multiplayer game together though will it? Since the game has to be online to access servers and whatnot, or does going offline just affect steam and not the game you play?
I bought a couple games for my girlfriend and she did for me too with the intent we would share the libraries, but for some reason only each others usernames don’t show up on the share list. Literally people I’ve since removed from my friends list still show up, but not hers or mine lol. No idea why it’s happening
It's fascinating that you managed a list of 10 hidden features without even touching upon the hidden developer console! It allows you to download old versions of games as long as that version existed after the Steampipe update back in 2010ish.
that is usefull, I see my self using it but for server side, I can all ways chose the version I whant i the settings for the game, but having steamCMD is one of the best gems that steam have...
The problem is the console isn't very average user friendly, and as you can't disable automatic updates, there are always caveats to downloading old game versions. There also isn't major purpose for the vast majority of titles, making it fairly niche outside of things like speedrunning where specific patches are played on.
@@Necrofitz using steamCMD to dl an old version doesn't change your default install and the new install isn't managed by steam. Doubles your disk usage sure, but it is still very useful. I mostly use it to maintain older versions of games that I mod.
Steam input is incredible. It even lets you use switch pro controllers without any additional setup. Just hook the thing to your pc, launch a game through Steam and start playing. At one point I was launching the epic game store through steam, so I could play Dauntless with my pro controller. Feels like black magic.
Imagine what you can do with Steam Input once you get into super sciencey like black magic stuff like button chords and action layers. Controllers begin to feel like you can actually have as much customization as keyboard and mouse that you rly wish the industry would catch up to this.
@@bahamutbbob I mean you technically can but it would take the analog part away by making it act like a 8 way dpad. I've seen people do that but it's not the same of course. UPDATE: I just checked with the Steam Deck UI stuff (which should be on the stable branch as well as beta). and they do have an invert Vertical axis for the Joystick and Mouse input.
Works great for VR too, my G2 reverb controllers (which are pretty old by now) work great with most newer VR games because of the custom input presets which are made by the community already.
Steam input could easily fill a video by itself with the features it offers, especially the API that allows devs to code in game actions rather than button prompts so you can assign any input option. EG a touchpad overlay button can be bound to "jump" directly instead of the B button where it's bound to in game.
I wish more developers would implement Steam Input, and *do so properly*. Few devs even bother with it, and even when they do, some of them will only reimplement an Xbox controller. (For example, Project DIVA MegaMIX.) Or worse, they'll screw it up so badly that Steam Controllers are unusable (Destiny 2). Thankfully Valve makes sure that their still-active games have decent (or better) uses. Dota 2 is the exception, though, since nobody plays that with anything other than K+M.
@@Formedras I've gotten Destiny 2 to work with Steam Controller, it works just fine. I actually try to actively use it cause I have button combos that make certain movement tech (EE skating FOR ALL CLASSES/SUPERS) working like a charm and work 98-100% of the time. Even have it swapping binds once in menus like your character screen so that mouse movement and all binds needed for menu navigation is a breeze. On top of that, I never have to use my face buttons (ABXY) ever cause it's all using either the grips, bumpers, DUAL STAGE triggers, or my trackpads.
@@dgamefather How do you deal with trackpad aiming? The game sees it as an Absolute Position, not a Relative, and I was never able to get the game to accept it as a mouse for aiming that way.
Something they didn't mention that is an important sticking point with library sharing, it is not just that only one person can play a game at a time, but only one person can access a single library at a time. So if your partner or best friend is playing a game that you own, you cannot play any of the other games that are in your specific library until they are done. (You can play games in their library while they play ones in yours) The phrasing of "you can't play the same game at the same time" kind of glosses over this fact in my opinion and it can be a headache when you are the one that owns the most games in that exchange.
Huh, in my experience If you own the account then you can play any other game except the one they are playing. If you don't own the account and try to launch a game, while the owner is already playing then it won't let you.
@@First-Last_name I tried this before with my brother playing Hades. The moment I tried playing Dota 2, he would get disconnected and his game would forcibly close.
Since my daughter came into my life, my gaming has become a lot more spontaneous. Having Steam Link and playing on my mobile has really allowed me to keep up with some gaming
Yeah but for the average guy at least they don't suck keep the UI pretty simple and it's not clunky I don't have very many complaints with valve or steam.
@@brokenice420 What do you mean? They don't have any competition because Valve's Steam is so far away the greatest gaming platform ever created that other companies literally haven't bothered to try anymore. You must be too young to remember Games for Windows Live, as Microsoft themselves tried and failed miserably, alongside literally every single company ever to make a product even 1/4th as useful as Steam is.
you do know you can force a game to use the steamworks API so they will show up in a server list you just need to know how to edit the API file it uses in a game to be the right info for the game you want to list a server for
@@vlad54rus-a my own steam which i will not share with non friends and family due to it being hacked in the past i trust no one and never will other than that just keep linking games to your steam and most will do it unless they are locked to another launcher
My personal favorite feature is the recently added 'Friends filter', under search by type they recently added the ability to not only search games by tag such as RPG, Shooter or any other common tag as seen in the store, but you can also search by friends who own, allowing you to squad up whatever games you share without having to run down the list. This makes it so much easier for me to find new games to play with my friends, especially when you add the Co-op/multiplayer tag to the games, allowing you to plan your next game to play as a group. P.s Hi from the guy that did a barrel roll during the chair curling match at the Whale lan party.
Yeah. Getting a Steam Deck, that local network transfer feature comes in really handy when I turn it back on and it needs to update a bunch of stuff. One thing that I do enjoy that wasn't mentioned was in internal Music Player. Not only does it give you an easy interface for playing all those Soundtracks that you accidentally bought with game bundles that are now part of your library, but you can also add in any other external source. It's not a robust music player, but it gives you something.
Not a direct Steam feature, but the plugin for Chrome, Augmented Steam, has a ton of useful features, but I mostly like it to sanity check game purchases by being able to see the best available price as well as the lowest price historically. You can also see pricing for other regions, though of course making use of that information is a risk if you don't have a legitimate reason in Valve's eyes. Also Augmented Steam shows information like what DRM is used etc, and I was recently able to confirm that it will also show a message if a title does not support family sharing, as I have run into that in the past; I recommended a game to my friend who has access to my library but the game wouldn't show up for him, turns out it was one of the few exclusions, and I had no easy way of knowing that at the time, but now it's as simple as checking the store page in my browser.
One aspect of remote play that was not highlighted was the fact that due to it being hosted on one's PC, it's usually preferable for fighting games that have really old delay based netcode. Key example being Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 where the community actually hosts it's own Parsec servers to connect to BUT when that isn't a choice for whatever reason(paperwork, price, time to setup) remote play is used as the alternative
For the hidden games segment, you can also do this to install previous game versions (de-update). Did this with Skyrim after Bethesda updated the game (by surprise) a broke a ton of mods.
Interesting timing for this video, Valve is going to be releasing a pretty significant UI update fairly soon. It's already available in the latest Steam client beta
@@ansemik I've been using it for a few days now and I actually think it's a really nice upgrade. It looks nice and there's some genuinely good new features added
My favourite non hidden feature is it's community. The Decky plugin for automatically finding all the artwork for games is amazing. I got art for everything, even for freaking Jet Force Gemini.
One good one is the ability to either shift+click or ctrl+click games to select multiple to either make groups/tabs, install or uninstall multiple, or effect other properties in bulk. This is really helpful for like if your hd dies and you want to queue up 20 games to reinstall at once
The browser built into the steam overlay is pretty useful. Some games are a bit of a pain to tab out of, so if you just want to Google something real quick you can use the steam browser instead.
My favorite feature is that you can hide your NSFW games in your library and get access to it in View section. There's a section for beta testing for steam which you can try new upcoming features. (Steam will update it's overall design a little bit soon) Adding nickname to friends so you won't lose them if they change their names is also a good feature.
Also Steam Input can be used to simulate gamepad when not supported, or use a gamepad as a wireless mouse. Also they have a Beta with a ton of new Overlay features including a notes section and stuff that seems awesome.
it’s insane how ahead steam is. there’s a reason epic and others aren’t even close to their market share. thankfully steam hasn’t gone apple on us (yet)
hold tight , we "might" get avatars on epic this year! much wow! , its only been in "up next" for over 2 years nearing 3 on there excuse of a roadmap.lmao
@@0106johnny I know as of 2020, it was still in, but I haven't used it recently. As a fun fact, all of Steam today is actually built on top of the Chromium browser
That Storage manager feature is so useful to transfer games between drives without having to reinstall the game. I just bought a SSD drive and was able to transfer games from my spinning hard drive via Steam.
My favorite is "Steam Remote Play Toghether" feature! Also I really love "Interactive Recommender" feature on store. It's hidden under "Your Store". Also "Labs" features are pretty interesting.
I loved the hardware Steam Link, the easy setup and its small and sleek design. Never got the Steam Link app running quite as easy and reliable no matter which platform I tried it on. There's always something to troubleshoot, be it performance or input compatibility.
@@digadigado The steam controller is great too, but honestly : not essential . You can always use a wireless mouse or a gamepad on a computer or steamlink so ...
Two words: Dynamic Collections. With those my library is so much more organized! You can set them the auto add games based on store tags, whether they're multiplayer or not or even genre. Give them a try!
You can create dynamic tags on your own. Like "games never played". 😅 It will show all the games you bought and never played. But it will show every SDK kit and exclusive server as well... those came with every half-life...
If you do another steam video, it would be cool if you talked about the origins of steam for a few beats INCLUDING Xfire and Fileplanet to educate these youngsters on what we had to go through to update our games. Wouldn’t take long and would love to see that part of pre-steam history showcased.
You can create a desktop configuration for your gamepad and map inputs like you would for games, this was pretty great when I used a ps4 controller on my pc and could use the touchpad as a mouse.
I once screwed a gyroscope there to control the cursor by clicking on the triangle (the cursor in desktop mode could be controlled with a stick, touchpad, and when I wanted to press the triangle and the gyroscope turns on), it was very convenient, the same all the other buttons for myself, the stock scheme is so-so
interestingly, the server view is something I used already for years. When I first started playing CS:Source, I learned from friends that I should search for servers there, being de_ for bomb maps, or cs_ for hostage, or then specific servers like deagle only maps, and add them to favorites if you liked them via the 'played recently' tab. Now I'm using it to go to my own hosted servers (Valheim), what is just amazing. I have my own game servers running, and have friends log in via the server window, all closed, not public, but still, awesome to do, and free (sure hardware and elec not counted, but no costs on renting a server), and it goes further, as we're doing that with Don't Starve together as well (although, that was more painfull to set up). But still, having this function in steam, ootb, it just amazing. Great video, really liked it! learned some things and please add a follow up!
Steam Input + Steam Deck built in inputs = Most crazy/useful custom configs I've ever seen. Some are so good they've become "my default" for any controller. Others are niche and only even possible on the Deck's controls due to the touch sensitivity thumbsticks+gyros & touch pads. All of them are awesome❤
Interesting thing about one of those 'Hidden Games': Spacewar (AppID: 480) is also the official temporary AppID for any developers integrating Steam into their games. So if you're a developer and testing your Steam functionality, Steam will show you as playing Spacewar.
@@YOEL_44 He had a video of a custom android client featuring this option. It's not a secret on this channel and it's how I learned about it myself (while using it, and ignoring the option)
Steam's local network share is one of my favorite features, I'm planning on setting up a pc to download my whole steam library so i can instantly download all my games from my network
There are a ton of steam features I really love. Gabe has done good things. Hopefully this means that the platform will be around for a very very long time.
Steam's Big Picture mode is criminally under used. I do not regularly use this mode before because I really do not liked the crappy UI and over all look of it but after their update it looks really good, clean and functional. It's like I already prefer using it over the normal view mode of steam.
11: Big Picture Mode. It's pretty underrated and is amazing on TVs, larger setups, and sometimes just for anything Also yeah, small mode is very useful
I really like the limit bandwidth for downloads feature. Since I have a slow WiFi connection, it is hard for me to both download a game and also play online simultaneously. I also become laggy in Discord. So the limit bandwidth allows me to apply a cap on bandwidth so I can do all these without lag
@@Platinum199 I kinda liked the old one better, it was slick and clean. Hopefully someone will make plugins for Windows like on Steam Deck to improve it
big picture has been always mixed for me, it's looks stunning but so underdone, the amount of features they left out for no reason is annoying and it's quite akward to use.
My favorite steam feature is the game backup feature. So if you uninstall a large game to free up space on your main drive you can install it again later faster locally. Or if for whatever reason Steam goes out of business.
You just made the developers who made these features happy. Nothing more disappointing then working on a feature for month, to not have anybody use it.
man, i must be a steam super user since i use all these on the reg. love remote play. i keep my gaming laptop on all the time and stream it too all the screens in my house. it's absolutely fantastic!
Steam is incredible, big picture has really come a long way. The controller support is top notch. Remote play works great on my unremarkable ISP hardware. Incredible value for something that's completely free.
![TEEDEE TADA - DIAMOND NARAKORN X LEGO LYKN [Special Dance Performance]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/QgtZedFeumA/mqdefault.jpg)
In my experience, most people dont know about this feature.
While in your library, you can go to "advanced filtering" for searching through your games. In that menu, you can input the names of people on your friends list to the filter games you have in common, but unlike the long used "compare games" feature, you can put in more than 1 person's user name, making it filter to games only each person on that list owns.
It makes for very easy deciding on what game to play when you have a group of friends online, but didnt plan in advance what to do.
big thumbs to this one. Didn't know I could select multiple people, but yes comparing games when you're trying to see what to play is so nice.
impressive!
Still sounds like too much work to justify socializing. I'm not looking to "go far" I'm just looking to "go fast".
Too many good games to get stuck on the treadmill of obsessing over just one lol
You are a good friend.
This is a fairly new feature that my friends and I just found a month ago.
This wasn't possible a year ago and it is absolutely great
Sounds like an awesome feature that I absolutely won't remember how to use the next time I'm playing games with more than 1 other person.
I can't imagine using Steam without that built in FPS counter. Been using it for years and it's so convenient.
You know whats even more convenient? RTSS
i wish they had a built in gpu temp tracker as well
when i started playing without it i started to have more fun
Since I use custom fan curve in MSI afterburner and a little OC I just use the FPS counter there. Lets me see more things then just fps.
@@chocolatehusky because installing steam is more convenient? RTSS Takes like 5 sec to install and you never have to worry about anything after that. Works with all games. Don't need to add non-steam to any library, and it has fps limiter scanline sync, all kinds of tracking for every component in your system.
A minor correction: The limitation of Family Sharing is not that games can't be played by multiple people concurrently. This limitation applies to the library, not a game... If someone's playing game X and you start game Y their session of game X will end after a couple of minutes.
Just go offline. Steam won't end anything for anyone if it can't check if someone is playing a game already
@@whateverman2137 This works, but I will add that the recipient of the games has to be online. Content that has been shared to you is inaccessible offline.
@@whateverman2137 You can also use this trick to play some multiplayer games with your friends, without them having to buy the game. Though some games will have the library code in the game itself (or they will put some sort of CD-key like feature to steam) and won't let the other person play if the game is online for both parties (on their servers anyway, stuff like VPNs to directly connect over a "LAN" still works).
I remember the days when this limitation was not a thing, good times. I would just share or receive games and as long as we were not playing the same game it was perfectly fine.
I swear this changed in the last 5 years. As in, you used to play multiple games from a single library at once. My brother could be playing a game while I was playing another. I don't know why they would change it to the whole library when the keys are for separate games that could be used simultaneously if you weren't using steam. ):
Steam Remote Play Together is rather underrated in its own right.
For games that normally have only local multiplayer and no online mode, you'll be able to stream it to a friend over the network so they can play the game with you, and vice versa. It streams the video to the second, and their input is separately sent back to the first player.
I didn't know this. Thanks.
My friends and I use Remote Play Together a lot. Just make sure that the host has a good enough upload capacity. My 10mbps is only good enough to stream to one player without lots of dropped frames. (could be that I am on wifi though)
Remote play is good for playing a game with friends.
But if you want to full control from another machine steam link is better.
For example you can 100% mirror your steam deck to your computer, not just a single game. That means emulators, desktop mode, everything works
Unfortunately, Valve puts remote play availability up to the developer, for some games with local multiplayer you must use an external application to do it.
@@sovo1212Or you can just share your entire desktop, instead of a game.
For Family Sharing, if you put your steam into Offline Mode you will be able to play your games locally installed on your computer and your kid/family can use your library.
big brain move.
😮😮 best tip right here. Had no idea this was possible
@@outatimetv iirc you could at one point even play games that someone shared with you whilst you were offline and they online but that got patched after a while so now only the original owner can play them in offline mode
I think a lot of people forget that offline mode even exists.
@@machuncz1261 That's why I block steam in the firewall. It works but if the owner is playing a game before you block it it wont work
As a workaround for family sharing limitations, you can usually run steam in offline mode yourself in order to have someone use your library at the same time, and some games will still let you play multiplayer this way, which is how my partner and I were able to play stardew valley together with only one purchase
Lol, nice little thing their
mind blown
oh that is smart.. I'll have to try that next time I need to play on my PC and the kids wanna play on the steam deck at the same time.
been doing this with my brother playing on PC and I'm playing on steam deck
The new steam beta has a bunch of new features like an in-game notepad, accessible from the steam overlay, that can sync your notes between devices. Great for chucking in-game passcodes, number combinations, or other info in that you might forget between play sessions.
still needs a bit of polish ime
Yeah but unfortunately it removed custom skins option and also I think the video was made before the beta was released
@@petrsvugr450 The new ui has been introduced to the steam beta client almost 2 weeks ago, they only covered the features already available in the stable release otherwise it wouldve confused some people.
Rip custom skins, ive been using metro for years but the new in-game UI is just too good
Oh wow, I should switch to beta hen. I seriously need the notepad feature
@@akimezra7178You can also pin it to see it in game without steam overlay opened!
The family share feature reminded me of playing oldies like Age of Empires II on a CD. My brother and I would load the game on one PC, then with the game in memory, pop out the disk and load it on another PC, then play over LAN with one empty CD ROM. It was like magic.
Hahah oh yeah in high school I used to carry a USB with Warcraft 3 TFT and the latest DotA map installed, it turned the PC lab into a 3v3 LAN party real quick
there are a couple of fun new features about family sharing though, 1 two accounts can't play the same game at the same time, and 2 publishers can opt out of family sharing whenever they want, this means you usually can't play games with your family/friends through family sharing, and on many AAA games it is simply not available
I was always baffled on how lan tournaments worked like if everyone needed their own CD or buy several copies of the gane.
@@XDbored1 True, but if two people are playing single player games with no need of internet connection, one of them could simply disconnect their computer from any network and Steam won't find out. I've done this so my girlfriend and I can play Hogwarts Legacy at the same time with no trouble.
but.. didn't the game check your drive several times during the gameplay? also, what about virtual drives, disk images and software like Daemon Tools?
I bought the Steam Link hardware back when it came out. I've still got it to this day, and continue to use it as an easy solution for streaming my PC games from my home computer to the much larger television in my livingroom. I was rather surprised when Valve stopped making them, as I found the device to be extremely useful for more than just steam games, as it wasn't hard to access the desktop and then use it as a remote link for virtually anything you want to do on your PC from another room. It was a great little piece of tech that I would not complain about seeing an updated version of.
I'm also still using my Steam Link. An updated new version would be nice. They really should build a new one.
It’s built-in intothe Shield as well.
Same. I use it every day. It's amazing.
Don't you guys have problems with input lag? I tried Steam Link with my PC+TV and lag is so big, most games are unplayable.
Both devices are connected with Ethernet with 100Mbit/s port (on TV) and 1Gbps on router and PC, so LAN is not an issue.
@@NaoNakashima mine works great, latency, never really noticed anything bad except when my router died. But obviously that wasn't my link fault. I am also running it at 2K on my PC.
There's a new feature in the beta version that just released this week that I am pumped for. Notepad. In game steam overlay note-taking system... Even has the ability to stay on screen while you play the game so that you don't have to keep alt tabbing out of the game to check your own notes or keep a pen and paper set of notes on hand.
Why would you need to take notes while gaming?
Usefull if don't play the game frequently and want to take notes where left or something. Also maybe writing up crafting recipes. Or simple calculating stuff
Really neat for puzzle games
@@eniff2925puzzle games, strategy games, games that are story-based and you don't play that often... Pretty much any game if you're a reviewer, the list goes on.
@@DanielFerreira-ez8qd the only game I would have taken notes for was Deus Ex and it had it built in.
During covid we would use the "filter games to ones you and a friend both own" feature now baked right into the library view, before you had to go to your friends profile to access this info. Later we found out that one of our LAN party members who moved to work for steam actually made this feature and when we found out and told him how much we used a lot it he was very excited!
we use and love it here, too! please thank him again some time!
Your LAN guy has made online partying so much easier for friends.
That's cool! Helps a lot with finding games to play spontaneously
But did he tell you anything about half life 3?
Please tell him we also need more complex filters, like "all games owned by users A, B, C, with a price below X", so we know user D can buy it.
To save everyone time, almost every "hidden" delisted game shown in the links in the description here was delisted because it's a multiplayer game or MMO and the servers are no longer up. So there's really no point in installing any of them. Codename Gordon is the exception, it does indeed work, but you're better off downloading the modded version from moddb as the actual flash game has been extracted and is now usable on Linux etc. too without the dodgy links still being active.
Streets of Kamurocho is a game Sega made based on Streets of Rage 2 using Yakuza characters. That's also delisted, but still downloadable if you want a short Streets of Rage parody game to play.
Another short, free, "joke" game was "8-bit Bayonetta", released as an April Fool's joke... which turned out to presage an actual and very good PC port of the first game. It was delisted basically just to avoid confusing people searching for the real game.
FNAF world was taken down because of the backlash from the games launch, he rereleased it on gamejolt later on
Yes, some JP publishers still release games which block non-JP players as the targeting customer are probably JP only, e.g. Koei's JP horseracing simulation game Winning Post(I think Koei need to unlock it as Umamusume makes a lot of fans of JP horseracing in other Asian countries like me)
It’s sad asf that poker night at inventory wasn’t on the list
One useful thing that might have been worth a mention is, some of those older early 2000's games, if you got it on disk and if Steam allows it. You can put the serial code from the disk into Steam for a free digital copy of that game. It doesn't work with all games but I still think this is a useful feature. I recently bought Medieval II Total War on disk this way, because buying the disk turned out to be a cheaper way of getting that game instead of buying direct from Steam.
How do you do that?
gee golly i can use my collector's edition M2TW on my laptop without the hassle of an external disk drive and some compatibility crap? sign me right up!
works for all total war games and over 800 other games i know as i have around that many non steam games in the program but most are not installed oh and also if they ended up adding a HD remake or addon to the game it will 99% of the time count your non steam version as one that is able to get the free upgraded version for free
Anybody got a list with all the games that support that feature?
WAIT A MINUTE, can it work with games that have been taken down from steam too?
I have a disk of Unreal II and I wanted to play it for so long, but I don't have a disk player in my pc
and the game has been taken down from the store, so if I can find the serial code,
could I be able to get a digital copy?
A video comparing steam's new local transfer feature to a proper cache server setup (like LTT used for the LAN party recently) could be pretty interesting
seconded
Already tested that. Depends on how fast PC is. If you have gigabit network and internet it's actually faster to download it from Internet. Your PC must compress it back in order to send it to secondary PC, local steamcache have it already compressed so it's much faster. My old PC was able to get max 200mbit , direct internet 800mbit
@@jirijirka9828 So I guess it's not really super useful, tho if you're on a metered connection or limited by X gigs/month downloads, saving like 50-100GB or sometimes even more of downloading could be extremely helpful.
So it's still a neat feature, imo.
Allowing you to transfer big games on your own network quite easily.
@@Ztygs Or if your Router can transfer 300MB/s, but your internet is only like 2MB/s
@@Ztygs Its very usefull, when you have slow OR metered internet. When you have 1Gbit/s internet or local steamcache, it can actualy be much slower due to need to pack the game to small compressed chunks to be able to send it to secondary PC. But original question was if steamcache is faster = it is by a lot! If you have slow internet and game is already cached there ;-)
Another nice steam feature is custom images. You can set a custom image for any game tile (both portrait and landscape for the last played game) and it now lets you set a custom background and logo on the game page. That feature also works with non steam games (which means that you can make them look like a regular steam game on your library) and it also works with animates png images!
SteamRomManager uses that (or at least tries) to download and add banner and capsule images to make emulated games not look awful in your library.
Which one of these secret steam features do you find most useful? Let us know below!
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3
nice video bro
prob my favorite one was the fps counter one i didnt actually know that!
beans
Btw, the UGREEN and ASUS ROG links are the same, links to the ROG unit. Might want to update that.
Same error can be found in the video description as well.
I cannot emphasize enough how underrated Steam Input is. Whenever I play a game on controller that requires aiming, I set the aim button to also enable gyro controls on my PS5 controller for fine-tune adjustments. Super useful for other things too, such as setting radial menus on the middle trackpad for additional buttons.
Wait. So you press trackpad to open a radial menu. Can you also select stuff with your finger on the trackpad?
@@zbastian You can make is to that the menu opens up as soon as you touch it, then drag to which option you want and it will select on release!
Or press it, and then point and press again to choose. The options are pretty much endless.
You can even make another button do something else while pressing another specific button!
@@DennanX that sounds pretty banger. Thanks for clarifying.
Absolutely true. I built a cabinet for playing pinball (FX3, Arcade, Dreams, ...) and getting the controls on windows right was a huge mess. With Steam Input it was really easy, I didnt bind keys to it but like a Xbox Controller remapping, so that playing the games is nearly the same in any pinball game (which is not when using keyboard controls)
@@zbastian The radial menus are part of a suite of steam input options that allow you to build entirely custom OSDs and link various keys/controller inputs/macros to them. It's insanely good. Radials, lists, user definable placement, icons, colours, naming etc. It's pretty fucking fantastic.
Please do a follow up video! This was so useful and I didn't know about most of these features!
I like using the library filling system to make my own categories for sorting games.
thats normal for subhumans
I'm particularly fond of "dynamic" collections. Currently, I have four:
* Unplayed (for when I feel like trying something new)
* VR (for when I eventually get an HMD lol, been waiting on Lynx R1 to come out so I can be 100% sure it's not a scam but it keeps getting delayed)
* Strategy (this collection is also filtered to only include installed games)
* Shooter (also installed only)
I made my Action/RPG collection static though because I didn't like how much overlap it had with Strategy IIRC. I wish those were better defined as separate categories (in English-speaking gaming culture, not just in Steam).
The "Betas" tab is great. Not necessarily for actual betas but for when devs keep old versions up there. Helps a lot with mods
Absolutely
Very useful with ETS2/ATS
I knew about the others but small mode is really nice and I had absolutely no clue it existed.
It's really the original way steam looked before there was much of anything with a store and so on
I used small mode for years but it has been so long I forgot it was even still there. How quaint.
There was a time where steam was consuming 1GB of ram for absolutely no reason without a steam window even being opened, or having any downloads so I set it to launch in small if needed along with some other tweaks and dropped way more in RAM usage,
I've been using the Small Mode for years and years. It's much cleaner and less background-bloaty than regular mode.
Family sharing, cool. Didn't know about that.
@@hypercynic
Why would anyone who wasn't dropped on their head as a baby use anything but Small mode anyway?
For the Linux, Proton and SteamDeck Users: Enable shader pre-caching on the Steam Settings. It will improve performance by pre-caching and pre-compiling all required shaders for your games, and reduce the hiccups when some new shader pops in at your game
Specially useful if you use DXVK(like a normal Linux user, or a normal SteamDeck user)
This. In my opinion, it needs to be enable by default.
@@Mereo110 Pretty sure that is default since 2 years or something? (as soon as they took it out of beta)
@@damian007567 the last time I installed Steam in Linux (October 2022), it wasn't on by default. I use Manjaro
It was default when I got my Deck a few months ago
@@matz289 iirc it recompiles if a game gets an update, but don't quote me on that. I must say I don't ever remember my pc being particularly sluggish when precompiling however.
For the remote download, you can also specify WHICH library you install the game to. Which is particularly useful for those of us with multiple drives for different purposes. It's great! Even works flawlessly for Linux! \o/
Can you ellaborate on that? It seems like it downloads to your favorite library in the the download sector...
@@jimaki_37 For me it lets me pick which library to install to. I don't really know what more to say than that, sorry!
You can stream the entire desktop, even though remote play is limited to games.
Simply add an external program such as notepad to your library and stream that.
Once it's streaming, minimize the window and you're good to go.
All these features are the reason Steam will stay on top for a long time. Rather than just doing the minimum, they develop all these features to even make non-steam games better, Steam is also one of the few game launchers that actually works (Not like the trash that Ubisoft and EA try to shove down our throats)
True, also their friendly approach when it comes to their connection to the users/community. They seem to really listen to what people want and actually do give your money back if a game for exmaple didnt function properly (whitout having to go trough a long process). This and them having one of the fastest ui's (also while its pritty simple) its just the goto launcher for me!
Also, it doesn't take an eternity to open on an hdd like the Epic launcher does
Steam's exellent UI is one of the main reasons why it's the best, other launchers feel like slow upscaled mobile apps while Steam feels like a regular desktop app built for usability, you can have hundreds of games and the UI would still remain snappy
@@bullettime2808 yep totally agreed, sad thing is if you open the steam beta it (now) also looks like some ass upscaled Phone ui
I'm sad that there isn't real competition in this space.
Uplay hasn't worked the last few times I tried to play Rainbowsix Siege. I don't even remember what game I was playing on Origin. It at least worked.
Epic games I only got to make a new Rocket League account.
Microsoft store works fine.
I remember using Steam's inbuilt music player when downloaded music was more normal. Being able to control your music whilst ingame (especially if you didn't have media keys) was a godsend. It sounded better than Windows Media Player too of I remember correctly, so I actually used it as my default for awhile.
never knew this existed, thanks!
Oh yes that is so cool and it is so game friendly with the popup and easy in-game controls. I remember the struggle with windows media player flickering in the corner above the full screen game and had to make them windowed to see the popup which I wanted to see and do quick control. Of course it always made the game either minimize to taskbar when clicked upon or would disappear just when I tabbed out or not show up at all. It had it's own life and moods I swear. Holy crap I am becoming frustrated remembering it.
Hope I'm giving some nostalgia to others with that.
Will not explain steam music, long story short, shift+tab and easy to scan,responsive music folders without copying. Absolute godsent.
This is why I love Valve. It's a bunch of geeks with the same problems. They love what they do and we love them for it.
Gabe Newell is my spirit animal.
This also got a semi upgrade in the new Beta of Steam with it now defaulting any bought soundtracks on steam to the player so you can easily play them
It's completely broken now sadly. And the beta limits it to soundtracks only.
foobar2000 and global shortcuts are my way - it works everywhere, not only while playing Steam games.
Steam cmd has been very useful for making servers with your friends and can be ran on the same computer playing the game or another one entirely dedicated to the server. Great for games where you want to leave the server open but don’t want your character to die while away and people can come and go as they please
I have honestly never heard of steam cmd, in all curiosity. Wha kind of games would you use this for?
@@blitzrigen in the past I have used it for games like V-Rising and Valhiem but it’s not limited to only those games. A variety of games can be used on steam cmd for personal servers.
Steam Input actually helped gyro aiming take off outside of the Switch, so I’m surprised that isn’t already common knowledge.
i swear the ps3 had gyro aiming if the game supported it
So it’s steams fault
Gyro aiming was a thing way before the switch
probably because steam input SUCKS
@@cnr_0778 Gyro controls have been around for a long time, but Steam Input refined them. Even on the Switch where almost all of the shooters are expected to support gyro controls it isn't as good as Steam Input gyro using a Switch Pro Controller.
Steam remote play is such a lifesaver if you have a good PC but want to play a multiplayer game with friends who don't. Just create a virtual machine, on there log in with the friend's steam account and if you start any game, they will be able to use steam remote play to stream it to themselves. Then just run the same game with your account on your host. This helped me immensely when I wanted to play CIV 6 with someone whose laptop was basically a toaster.
That's a really cool use case! Ofc latency sensitive games wouldn't work that well, but still epic overall.
What VM did you use?
What vm did you usee ? I'm curious
@Anybody @Ipann I used vmware workstation player. The best VM there is imo.
HUGE thank you for the Controller Layout heads up! It actually works on older games that only use DirectInput to adapt them to Xbox input. I just was able to run Xbox controls, with trigger throttle and brake, on Monster Truck Madness 2, a game from 1998! Literal game changer.
Yeah, Steam Input I swear should be universal for everything nowadays IMO. It's rly nice having controller like binds being able to do just as much as KB/M when it boils down to it. I've actually got a template for MMOs that allows up to 4 hotbars of 12 hotkeys each to be bound using 1-3 buttons each, with one needing 3-4 buttons to activate, but they are super easy to remember and reach compared to doing them all on your KB and/or Mouse
Yup, Gothic 1 and 2 on gamepad is freaking nice!
I know this probably wouldn't make the cut for a Steam Features video, but I really do appreciate how user-friendly and straightforward Proton is. I used to game on PC but don't much anymore and that's one of the reasons I was able to justify switching to Linux, but knowing that I can still play some (most) of my old library is pretty comforting. I also feel like, with that compatibility layer in between the OS and the game, I've had fewer issues than when I was just jumping to newer and newer versions of windows (and getting more and more compatibility problems for old games).
the only two things keeping me away from Linux are League Of Legends(I play a lot with my friends) and the fucking wireless card in my laptop which works like a potato in almost every distro i have tried.
You can get an Intel AX210 for like 20 bucks, it'll be way faster and more stable. Also I thought LoL ran fine on Linux?
@@michaelmonstar4276 🤓
@@qwertychouskie7815 Thanks for the recommendation, I will buy it and check it and if it works I will try to migrate once and for all since W10 has its days numbered, W11 is garbage and I don't like how Microsoft plans to put AI and ads in W12.
@@segiraldovi Awesome! Just double-check that the old card and new card use the same connector before you order. If your laptop is around 2013ish or older, it may use a Mini PCIe connector instead, in which case the Intel 7260HMW with Mini PCIe connector should work (not the 7260HMW BN, 7260HMW NB, or the 7260HMW AC, these variants may have weird behavior on Linux).
Controller support on Steam is really one of the best features of it! I couldn't use my Nintende Switch Pro controller without it. I would recommed using it for anyone who plays games on pc with controllers. You can even launch other launchers such as Epic through steam to use your controller settings on games there. It really is so great.
Agreed, Steam Input is fantastic. I would definitely look into GlosSI as well if you want more availability for games to work with Steam Input.
@@dgamefather Oh thank you so much. My only problem with Steam Input was using it with Microsoft Store/Gamepass games. And GlosSI seems to fix that problem.
Some that I use frequently.
Depot downloading, for previous title updates.
Going to account data to see pretty much everything you've ever done, like sale game participation, comments you've reported, demos played in next fests, etc.
Steam can easily show you where a games files are.
The feature to add and remove options when you right click the icon.
Adding the audio delay at 4:09 was a genius stroke of editing. This editor deserves a raise.
I thought I was seeing things! Glad I'm not the only one who noticed that
I remember Linus ranting about comments like this one time. His argument was that employees who are just doing their job don’t “need a raise”.
What about equating inflation?
@@ThePrimordialChronicles I'm sure a business of this size can adjust for inflation
@@brandonhoover2120 fair, yet it does have lots to do with what he pays them. IF the editor is better at most other editors, than said editor should demand a higher wage, or LTT risk losing said awesome editor. Quality of labor should not be an afterthought and not a black and white, "did you do the thing today? Yes! Great, you get to keep your job for another day" attitude. Not saying LTT does this, but you obviously think this way.
It depends on the game, but some games that have regular new content updates that break savegames will make old versions of the game available via the betas tab in the game config (which is itself worth a note). That way you can keep playing in an older patch version until you're done with your playthrough. Paradox interactive is a studio that really heavily uses this feature across most of their titles, and I wish more developers did it.
Also, it would be great, if it would possible for mods to do the same
(Without irony mod manager)
That is a really nice feature. Arma 3 updates regularly break savegames. Does this work for every game, or do the devs need to support it specificly?
@@SerumCRM114 Devs need to support it, but I don't know how much work it is. It shouldn't be much, as you should only have to tell steam, add the beta, with that name, as that "file"
Witcher 3 also did it after the new gen update
The steam input tip is really next level. Its already lovely on the deck, but on pc thats also so helpful.
The local network transfer also is really helpful, and surprised me on my steam deck when it suddenly didn’t say downloading haha.
Family sharing is incredible
get a few friends together and bam, you library just tripled in size
Also, if the host puts steam in offline mode, you can both play the game at the same time!
How does that last one work for you, it's never worked for me or my friends
@@localtavernsluteplayer2182 The person sharing the game has to be offline, thus steam won't see that person is online playing the game
@@rafatvaz This won't work if you both want to play a multiplayer game together though will it? Since the game has to be online to access servers and whatnot, or does going offline just affect steam and not the game you play?
@@headknocker2020yes it will work you can even go to the files for the game and launch it there even if the host is playing a game
I bought a couple games for my girlfriend and she did for me too with the intent we would share the libraries, but for some reason only each others usernames don’t show up on the share list.
Literally people I’ve since removed from my friends list still show up, but not hers or mine lol. No idea why it’s happening
It's fascinating that you managed a list of 10 hidden features without even touching upon the hidden developer console! It allows you to download old versions of games as long as that version existed after the Steampipe update back in 2010ish.
that is usefull, I see my self using it but for server side, I can all ways chose the version I whant i the settings for the game, but having steamCMD is one of the best gems that steam have...
The problem is the console isn't very average user friendly, and as you can't disable automatic updates, there are always caveats to downloading old game versions. There also isn't major purpose for the vast majority of titles, making it fairly niche outside of things like speedrunning where specific patches are played on.
I said the same thing! I used it to grab an older version of Elden Ring after an update broke the Co-Op mod and the mod hadn't been updated yet.
@@Necrofitz using steamCMD to dl an old version doesn't change your default install and the new install isn't managed by steam. Doubles your disk usage sure, but it is still very useful. I mostly use it to maintain older versions of games that I mod.
Oh, I know it..... being a Skyrim/Fallout4 modders and forgetting to do backups of the executable makes you learn new things every day :'|
Steam input is incredible. It even lets you use switch pro controllers without any additional setup. Just hook the thing to your pc, launch a game through Steam and start playing.
At one point I was launching the epic game store through steam, so I could play Dauntless with my pro controller. Feels like black magic.
Imagine what you can do with Steam Input once you get into super sciencey like black magic stuff like button chords and action layers. Controllers begin to feel like you can actually have as much customization as keyboard and mouse that you rly wish the industry would catch up to this.
Too bad for people like me, who play with the right stick Y inverted and steam input just doesn't allow that.
@@bahamutbbob I mean you technically can but it would take the analog part away by making it act like a 8 way dpad. I've seen people do that but it's not the same of course.
UPDATE: I just checked with the Steam Deck UI stuff (which should be on the stable branch as well as beta). and they do have an invert Vertical axis for the Joystick and Mouse input.
Works great for VR too, my G2 reverb controllers (which are pretty old by now) work great with most newer VR games because of the custom input presets which are made by the community already.
@@bahamutbbobyou just flip the axis in config
Steam input could easily fill a video by itself with the features it offers, especially the API that allows devs to code in game actions rather than button prompts so you can assign any input option.
EG a touchpad overlay button can be bound to "jump" directly instead of the B button where it's bound to in game.
what about those commmunity made mods that enables or fix controller support for a game?
My ps4 controller drifts as hell
Guess what steam can fix
Looks at games/consoles that dont have any way to increase the deadzone
I wish more developers would implement Steam Input, and *do so properly*. Few devs even bother with it, and even when they do, some of them will only reimplement an Xbox controller. (For example, Project DIVA MegaMIX.) Or worse, they'll screw it up so badly that Steam Controllers are unusable (Destiny 2).
Thankfully Valve makes sure that their still-active games have decent (or better) uses. Dota 2 is the exception, though, since nobody plays that with anything other than K+M.
@@Formedras I've gotten Destiny 2 to work with Steam Controller, it works just fine. I actually try to actively use it cause I have button combos that make certain movement tech (EE skating FOR ALL CLASSES/SUPERS) working like a charm and work 98-100% of the time. Even have it swapping binds once in menus like your character screen so that mouse movement and all binds needed for menu navigation is a breeze. On top of that, I never have to use my face buttons (ABXY) ever cause it's all using either the grips, bumpers, DUAL STAGE triggers, or my trackpads.
@@dgamefather How do you deal with trackpad aiming? The game sees it as an Absolute Position, not a Relative, and I was never able to get the game to accept it as a mouse for aiming that way.
Something they didn't mention that is an important sticking point with library sharing, it is not just that only one person can play a game at a time, but only one person can access a single library at a time.
So if your partner or best friend is playing a game that you own, you cannot play any of the other games that are in your specific library until they are done. (You can play games in their library while they play ones in yours)
The phrasing of "you can't play the same game at the same time" kind of glosses over this fact in my opinion and it can be a headache when you are the one that owns the most games in that exchange.
You didn't hear this from me, but if the owner of the library sets Steam to Offline Mode then both can play at the same time
Huh, in my experience If you own the account then you can play any other game except the one they are playing. If you don't own the account and try to launch a game, while the owner is already playing then it won't let you.
@@First-Last_name I tried this before with my brother playing Hades. The moment I tried playing Dota 2, he would get disconnected and his game would forcibly close.
that must be new, It used to be only one person cold play one game, not 2 in the same game, and the owner would have priority every single time
When I started a game while my friend was playing, it just kicked him out.
Since my daughter came into my life, my gaming has become a lot more spontaneous. Having Steam Link and playing on my mobile has really allowed me to keep up with some gaming
you might be interested in Steam Deck then, it's suspend and resume is just top tier QoL when you can't find time for longer gaming sessions
What games do you play on mobile?
I couldn't think of a single game in my library that would be fun or even possible to play on a smartphone 😂
@@Jehty_ I guess he has razer kishi type thing for his phone.
@@Jehty_ The comment by Matt and the reply by JM *SLAP* of corporate propaganda. It literally looks like an ad masquerading as two comments lmao
It's so nice to see a company still innovate so much even when they hold a monopoly
I was going to bring up epic store but there's not much competition
They hold a monopoly because they dont abuse it. To my knowledge at least.
Yeah but for the average guy at least they don't suck keep the UI pretty simple and it's not clunky I don't have very many complaints with valve or steam.
They don’t have competition only because they haven’t messed it up yet
@@brokenice420 What do you mean? They don't have any competition because Valve's Steam is so far away the greatest gaming platform ever created that other companies literally haven't bothered to try anymore. You must be too young to remember Games for Windows Live, as Microsoft themselves tried and failed miserably, alongside literally every single company ever to make a product even 1/4th as useful as Steam is.
One little correction: the server browser doesn't apply to all your game library, only to the titles that implement the Steamworks API.
and, sadly, not many modern games even use dedicated servers - almost everything is just p2p
you do know you can force a game to use the steamworks API so they will show up in a server list you just need to know how to edit the API file it uses in a game to be the right info for the game you want to list a server for
@@maxrander0101Got any sources on that?
@@vlad54rus-a my own steam which i will not share with non friends and family due to it being hacked in the past i trust no one and never will other than that just keep linking games to your steam and most will do it unless they are locked to another launcher
@@maxrander0101 wait what? hacked from sharing your username???
My personal favorite feature is the recently added 'Friends filter', under search by type they recently added the ability to not only search games by tag such as RPG, Shooter or any other common tag as seen in the store, but you can also search by friends who own, allowing you to squad up whatever games you share without having to run down the list.
This makes it so much easier for me to find new games to play with my friends, especially when you add the Co-op/multiplayer tag to the games, allowing you to plan your next game to play as a group.
P.s Hi from the guy that did a barrel roll during the chair curling match at the Whale lan party.
Though I knew about all of these features, it just makes me appreciate how much Steam has improved for us. Great platform.
While they have some nice and appreciated features, I'd still call it a shitty platform overall
Yeah. Getting a Steam Deck, that local network transfer feature comes in really handy when I turn it back on and it needs to update a bunch of stuff. One thing that I do enjoy that wasn't mentioned was in internal Music Player. Not only does it give you an easy interface for playing all those Soundtracks that you accidentally bought with game bundles that are now part of your library, but you can also add in any other external source. It's not a robust music player, but it gives you something.
Not a direct Steam feature, but the plugin for Chrome, Augmented Steam, has a ton of useful features, but I mostly like it to sanity check game purchases by being able to see the best available price as well as the lowest price historically. You can also see pricing for other regions, though of course making use of that information is a risk if you don't have a legitimate reason in Valve's eyes. Also Augmented Steam shows information like what DRM is used etc, and I was recently able to confirm that it will also show a message if a title does not support family sharing, as I have run into that in the past; I recommended a game to my friend who has access to my library but the game wouldn't show up for him, turns out it was one of the few exclusions, and I had no easy way of knowing that at the time, but now it's as simple as checking the store page in my browser.
One aspect of remote play that was not highlighted was the fact that due to it being hosted on one's PC, it's usually preferable for fighting games that have really old delay based netcode. Key example being Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 where the community actually hosts it's own Parsec servers to connect to BUT when that isn't a choice for whatever reason(paperwork, price, time to setup) remote play is used as the alternative
For the hidden games segment, you can also do this to install previous game versions (de-update). Did this with Skyrim after Bethesda updated the game (by surprise) a broke a ton of mods.
Yep. Did this with Shadow of War myself, as I actually prefer the longer epilogue.
I would love to do this for a couple games that updated their games and removed the LAN features
Not usually a fan of list videos, but this was actually very informative and useful!
Interesting timing for this video, Valve is going to be releasing a pretty significant UI update fairly soon. It's already available in the latest Steam client beta
Thats 100% why they made this video
ruined small mode tbh
ruining the UI again??? why
@@slayerdwarfify You'd think they would have waited so the video wouldn't look completely outdated in just a matter of weeks
@@ansemik I've been using it for a few days now and I actually think it's a really nice upgrade. It looks nice and there's some genuinely good new features added
My favourite non hidden feature is it's community. The Decky plugin for automatically finding all the artwork for games is amazing. I got art for everything, even for freaking Jet Force Gemini.
One good one is the ability to either shift+click or ctrl+click games to select multiple to either make groups/tabs, install or uninstall multiple, or effect other properties in bulk. This is really helpful for like if your hd dies and you want to queue up 20 games to reinstall at once
I found that out making part groups in space engineers but that trick works for lots of things (browsers tabs, file explorer and probably more)
Ctrl+Click and Shift+Click for selections are standard features of any graphical poin-and-click OS...
@@YounesLayachi yeah I just never know about it or had to use it until I played space engineers
The browser built into the steam overlay is pretty useful. Some games are a bit of a pain to tab out of, so if you just want to Google something real quick you can use the steam browser instead.
My favorite feature is that you can hide your NSFW games in your library and get access to it in View section.
There's a section for beta testing for steam which you can try new upcoming features. (Steam will update it's overall design a little bit soon)
Adding nickname to friends so you won't lose them if they change their names is also a good feature.
I would love another episode of this! I completely forgot about the family sharing thing they have.
Also Steam Input can be used to simulate gamepad when not supported, or use a gamepad as a wireless mouse.
Also they have a Beta with a ton of new Overlay features including a notes section and stuff that seems awesome.
Overlays only worked on big picture mode, did they fix this?
it’s insane how ahead steam is. there’s a reason epic and others aren’t even close to their market share. thankfully steam hasn’t gone apple on us (yet)
I mean, they did enough to get sued for having a monopoly, apparently.
@@IzraelGraves thats a stupid lawsuit
hold tight , we "might" get avatars on epic this year! much wow! , its only been in "up next" for over 2 years nearing 3 on there excuse of a roadmap.lmao
Steam has 15 years head start and has been a monopoly for the majority of that time. It's the apple of PC gaming.
@@asmosisyup2557 pfhaha .... no.
I distinctly remember my surprise when I first accidentally opened the Steam MP3 Player lol
ok
Does Steam still have the full flegded web browser embedded into the ingame overlay? I remember using that all the time for looking stuff up
@@0106johnny I know as of 2020, it was still in, but I haven't used it recently. As a fun fact, all of Steam today is actually built on top of the Chromium browser
@@0106johnny yes it does
That Storage manager feature is so useful to transfer games between drives without having to reinstall the game. I just bought a SSD drive and was able to transfer games from my spinning hard drive via Steam.
Thanks for the Steam tech tips man
My favorite is "Steam Remote Play Toghether" feature!
Also I really love "Interactive Recommender" feature on store. It's hidden under "Your Store". Also "Labs" features are pretty interesting.
I loved the hardware Steam Link, the easy setup and its small and sleek design. Never got the Steam Link app running quite as easy and reliable no matter which platform I tried it on. There's always something to troubleshoot, be it performance or input compatibility.
I use the steam link almost every day to cast my computer on my main TV : very easy and fast to boot 👌
It's so seamless! I can't believe they discontinued it.
regret not getting a few when they were selling off the stock when discontinuing it, same with steam controllers
@@digadigado The steam controller is great too, but honestly : not essential . You can always use a wireless mouse or a gamepad on a computer or steamlink so ...
@@samsoulee I just have a steam controller that I do like using but I don't want to use it cause then I'll get used to it too much then it'll die
Two words: Dynamic Collections. With those my library is so much more organized! You can set them the auto add games based on store tags, whether they're multiplayer or not or even genre. Give them a try!
Agreed on this. It made finding all the rhythm games I own much easier.
You can create dynamic tags on your own. Like "games never played". 😅 It will show all the games you bought and never played. But it will show every SDK kit and exclusive server as well... those came with every half-life...
Family Sharing has been such a huge boon to us. It's got a fair bit of leeway and I like that.
i knew most of these, but a few were really handy, i cant wait for the follow up to learn even more "hidden" tricks in steam.
5:11 Two sponsors and super snappy ug, amazing!
If you do another steam video, it would be cool if you talked about the origins of steam for a few beats INCLUDING Xfire and Fileplanet to educate these youngsters on what we had to go through to update our games. Wouldn’t take long and would love to see that part of pre-steam history showcased.
You can create a desktop configuration for your gamepad and map inputs like you would for games, this was pretty great when I used a ps4 controller on my pc and could use the touchpad as a mouse.
I once screwed a gyroscope there to control the cursor by clicking on the triangle (the cursor in desktop mode could be controlled with a stick, touchpad, and when I wanted to press the triangle and the gyroscope turns on), it was very convenient, the same all the other buttons for myself, the stock scheme is so-so
interestingly, the server view is something I used already for years. When I first started playing CS:Source, I learned from friends that I should search for servers there, being de_ for bomb maps, or cs_ for hostage, or then specific servers like deagle only maps, and add them to favorites if you liked them via the 'played recently' tab. Now I'm using it to go to my own hosted servers (Valheim), what is just amazing. I have my own game servers running, and have friends log in via the server window, all closed, not public, but still, awesome to do, and free (sure hardware and elec not counted, but no costs on renting a server), and it goes further, as we're doing that with Don't Starve together as well (although, that was more painfull to set up). But still, having this function in steam, ootb, it just amazing.
Great video, really liked it! learned some things and please add a follow up!
Steam Input + Steam Deck built in inputs = Most crazy/useful custom configs I've ever seen. Some are so good they've become "my default" for any controller. Others are niche and only even possible on the Deck's controls due to the touch sensitivity thumbsticks+gyros & touch pads.
All of them are awesome❤
Totally agree, Steam controller configs are just as crazy too.
Knew some of the hidden features but learnt about a lot of new ones . Loved the video Linus :))
Lots of great info, hope LTT do a part 2
Interesting thing about one of those 'Hidden Games': Spacewar (AppID: 480) is also the official temporary AppID for any developers integrating Steam into their games. So if you're a developer and testing your Steam functionality, Steam will show you as playing Spacewar.
Lol it's mostly used to squat steam servers on cracked game. It even give you a piracy warning guide when you play it.
A lot of me mateys play it while sailing the high seas. Arr!
@@adsads196 lol I have more than 150h on Spacewar
I like it how the video is just released and sponsors are already cleaned up. Good job fam
Dude, it's suposed to be a secret...
@@YOEL_44 He had a video of a custom android client featuring this option. It's not a secret on this channel and it's how I learned about it myself (while using it, and ignoring the option)
If wouldn't be there I would skip it manually
Dynamic Lists were a gamechanger for me! Being able to see all installed games on top of a library containing more than 1300 games is a blessing!
Also, I love that Small Mode is basically the original Steam interface from way back when.
Steam's local network share is one of my favorite features, I'm planning on setting up a pc to download my whole steam library so i can instantly download all my games from my network
Wow, actual tech tips on LTT 😮
you must explain how to make a launchable shortcut with launch parameters, very useful when you need to swap between setting.
There are a ton of steam features I really love. Gabe has done good things. Hopefully this means that the platform will be around for a very very long time.
Hope you do follow up with more of these tips. I knew most of these ones already, but still learned something new!
Steam's Big Picture mode is criminally under used. I do not regularly use this mode before because I really do not liked the crappy UI and over all look of it but after their update it looks really good, clean and functional. It's like I already prefer using it over the normal view mode of steam.
The problem is the new big picture mod is extremely slow at times for some devices.
Ah yes, I love waking up to obscurities being told to me by Linus
Waking up? I'm back from work and eating dinner...
Nothing I didn't know, but it's great to see light being shone on what makes steam great.
11: Big Picture Mode. It's pretty underrated and is amazing on TVs, larger setups, and sometimes just for anything
Also yeah, small mode is very useful
but they literally talked about big picture mode
I really like the limit bandwidth for downloads feature. Since I have a slow WiFi connection, it is hard for me to both download a game and also play online simultaneously. I also become laggy in Discord. So the limit bandwidth allows me to apply a cap on bandwidth so I can do all these without lag
You guys should make a video on how to secure a TH-cam channel after your experience and what one should do if they are hacked
I've used the remote play few times. that was sorta the main thing with the Steam Machines.. and I still got tons of delisted games ! like DiRT Rally
Steam workshop is such a timersaver, and such a great feature for the modding community
Thanks for this, definitely some things I'd forgotten about!
I'd definitely love a '10 more' video!
I hate Big Picture mode, but learning about Small Mode is revolutionary for me. Having my library be that small and tidy is beautiful on my setup.
I love big picture mode, the new one not the old one
Pretty useful for living room gaming with a controller. Pretty sure that's the intent of it.
@@Platinum199 I kinda liked the old one better, it was slick and clean. Hopefully someone will make plugins for Windows like on Steam Deck to improve it
big picture has been always mixed for me, it's looks stunning but so underdone, the amount of features they left out for no reason is annoying and it's quite akward to use.
My favorite steam feature is the game backup feature. So if you uninstall a large game to free up space on your main drive you can install it again later faster locally. Or if for whatever reason Steam goes out of business.
having used steam for 18 years, I knew all of these already. But it is cool to see people so passionate about it still.
3:23 Really curious what "SD Card" y'all have that connects with an Ethernet cable
You just made the developers who made these features happy. Nothing more disappointing then working on a feature for month, to not have anybody use it.
man, i must be a steam super user since i use all these on the reg. love remote play. i keep my gaming laptop on all the time and stream it too all the screens in my house. it's absolutely fantastic!
Alternate video title: 10 features that the EPIC Games store does NOT have
Steam is incredible, big picture has really come a long way. The controller support is top notch. Remote play works great on my unremarkable ISP hardware. Incredible value for something that's completely free.
😼