The Steam library’s beta version of its shiny new feature are now up and running, so those who are champing at the bit to try out a new-look library without having to resort to Big Picture mode can now opt in.
As our previous coverage mentioned, the new Steam Library has gobs of new additions to help users curate their experience, from custom shelves and collections, to deeper friend activity features, to improved game details pages that collect posts from friends, community content, and even post-game summaries of recently earned achievements or new screenshots. There’s also the new event and announcement feature that lets game devs put major updates front and center.
Having taken a quick perusal through my own updated library, I can certainly say that there are a couple of features that are extremely useful. For one, the “What’s New” section at the very top of the library page makes it instantly easy to keep track of updates to the games I have in my collection. Navigating to an individual game’s page provides a pretty good collation of relevant posts, updates, and other data similar to the game summary section of a PS4. I also found it to be similarly superfluous, but mostly because I’m not an achievement hunter; those who track those sort of things or find more traction out of Steam’s social features will likely appreciate what they see.
If any of these functions sound remotely interesting to you, then read the manual for how to join in. Just remember: Friends don’t let friends use Big Picture mode.
