ETA for Steam client fix?

[Pixel Peeper]

The new Steam client has been out for a while now.

First I'd like to say I don't care about the UI. Companies change UIs all the time, sometimes for the better, usually for the worse, but as long as everything works, I don't particularly care.

But that's the thing. It doesn't work. Until today it was extremely buggy (takes a whole minute to start, ridiculously laggy, back arrow not working, Block and Edit buttons not working, pages becoming entirely black, 1.1 GB RAM usage, etc)... and now it won't even start!

I've been using the browser version to post in the forums, but there's no place to start my games from here. I'm not 100% sure I can even start my games without the client, if I need to start Proton manually, etc.

It's absurd for a company of Valve's size to not have a functional client for Steam. And it's been broken for like a month. SURELY there's going to be a fix soon.

But when?

[psychotic.reaction]

Never, man.

You’ll get a functional client when Valve feels like it. Until then, enjoy.

[MoonC A T]

Originally posted by Pixel Peeper:

a fix

LOL...a fix....HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[RiO]

The time window with which the current stable release was shoved out to people coincides with Google pulling the plug on their Universal Analytics service. From a previous news bulletin released by Valve, we know they weren't planning on migrating to or supporting Google's successor - Analytics 4, but were planning on deploying a home-brew tracking solution with Steam.

Odds are the new client had to be fast-tracked to public release for that.
Which explains the painfully premature state it was released in.

Might also explain why they're now taking their time resolving issues on the beta branch.
Maybe they want to do one final quality update to fix the majority of the problems.


Ofcourse, Valve is ubiquitously Valve, so the possibility that they're just going to shrug and call it a day also never left the table - sadly. They have done the thing where they leave bugs hanging around for years on end, before.

[Stellar Remnant]

I hated it for the first day, but I'm actually getting used to it. The adaptability of the human mind is surprising.

[Pixel Peeper]

Originally posted by RiO:

The time window with which the current stable release was shoved out to people coincides with Google pulling the plug on their Universal Analytics service. From a previous news bulletin released by Valve, we know they weren't planning on migrating to or supporting Google's successor - Analytics 4, but were planning on deploying a home-brew tracking solution with Steam.

Odds are the new client had to be fast-tracked to public release for that.
Which explains the painfully premature state it was released in.

Might also explain why they're now taking their time resolving issues on the beta branch.
Maybe they want to do one final quality update to fix the majority of the problems.


Ofcourse, Valve is ubiquitously Valve, so the possibility that they're just going to shrug and call it a day also never left the table - sadly. They have done the thing where they leave bugs hanging around for years on end, before.

Oh, I see... that's why this client is such a mess.

Still, it looks like their standards are lower and lower. It went from "It's OK if it's a little bugged for a bit" to "It's OK if it's seriously bugged for a while" to "It's OK if it's barely functional for over a month" to "It's OK if it doesn't even work at all for some time".

This leads me to believe I will eventually lose access to my library of games. I can't even play my currently installed games right now, without the client there's no way to manage downloads and installs at all. There's no backup.

All of Steam is a single step away from death.

I still have GOG but I'll be really angry if Steam's extreme incompetence causes me to lose all the games I had on Steam and not on GOG.

It'll be grounds for a REAL class action lawsuit, not one of those scams.

[Pixel Peeper]

Originally posted by MiniHerc:

I hated it for the first day, but I'm actually getting used to it. The adaptability of the human mind is surprising.

I'm not sure how my mind could get used to the client considering it won't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ start.

[aiusepsi]

From your mention of Proton, I'd guess you're on some flavour of Linux? Linux's heterogeneous nature means there's so many possible software configurations that you're more likely to hit bugs just because it's impossible to test every possible configuration.

You may want to report your issue on the Steam for Linux issue tracker page here: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux

Originally posted by RiO:

The time window with which the current stable release was shoved out to people coincides with Google pulling the plug on their Universal Analytics service. From a previous news bulletin released by Valve, we know they weren't planning on migrating to or supporting Google's successor - Analytics 4, but were planning on deploying a home-brew tracking solution with Steam.

Odds are the new client had to be fast-tracked to public release for that.

This is verging on conspiracy theory. I'm all but certain that those things being around the same time is just a coincidence. What Valve is pulling support for is developers being able to add their own Google Analytics identifier to the store page for their game, so that developers can track how people are arriving at their game's store page. That's got nothing to do with the Steam client at all.

They're not "planning on deploying a home-brew tracking solution", but improving the existing system that they rolled out two years ago.

(For the reference of other people reading, the announcement that Valve is dropping support for GA is here.)

As far as I'm aware, there was no usage of Google Analytics in the Steam client itself. And even if there was and there was a scramble to remove it, it wouldn't make any sense that the update which removed it had to be the update which converted lots of Steam UI from being based on their own in-house VGUI toolkit to one that's based on a web browser. A simple hot-fix to the existing client would have sufficed.

[Crazy Tiger]

Originally posted by Pixel Peeper:

It's absurd for a company of Valve's size to not have a functional client for Steam. And it's been broken for like a month. SURELY there's going to be a fix soon.

The thing is that the client isn't actually that broken. Or at least not for most people.

Part of the problems seems to be the random nature of some issues.

Originally posted by Pixel Peeper:

But when?

The beta seems to have some fixes for some issues. For the rest: Valve time.

[Empty Skies]

Originally posted by MoonC A T:

Originally posted by Pixel Peeper:

a fix

LOL...a fix....HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

^Unfortunately this.

[Pixel Peeper]

Originally posted by aiusepsi:

From your mention of Proton, I'd guess you're on some flavour of Linux? Linux's heterogeneous nature means there's so many possible software configurations that you're more likely to hit bugs just because it's impossible to test every possible configuration.

All previous clients worked totally fine, though. And other people, not on Linux, are reporting those bugs.

I managed to get the client started again but it's still super buggy. And if that whole Universal Analytics isn't actually the reason the bugged client was pushed out early, that means someone at Valve made the incomprehensibly incompetent decision of releasing a super buggy client early when they had a perfectly working one already.

None of it makes sense.

[DiceDsx]

Update for the stable client dropped:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/collection/steam/?emclan=103582791457287600&emgid=3690185668857088021

[Pixel Peeper]

Originally posted by Xenophobe:

better off using the beta client until they sort this new UI ... fixes happen much faster.

When the beta version is more stable than the release version...

I may just try it out.

[peppermint hollows]

Originally posted by Pixel Peeper:

Originally posted by Xenophobe:

better off using the beta client until they sort this new UI ... fixes happen much faster.

When the beta version is more stable than the release version...

I may just try it out.

I've been on the Beta since it had the new UI available and I can confirm this too. I haven't had nearly as many issues as people have been complaining about and who I assume are using the normal client. And things like the back button breaking seemingly were fixed on here first.

If it's worse for you or not any better you can always opt out of the beta and just go back to the stable branch.

[Lystent]

A non-beta update hit for me today. So far, looks like the client uses as much RAM on my 16 gig tower at start up as it did on my 2 gig tablet. Still climbs a bit though, but hopefully no longer "leaks". I still got to test the back button, and notifications might still be broken (I got yet another for the same post that I have gotten notifications for for the past IDK how long).

[RiO]

Originally posted by aiusepsi:

This is verging on conspiracy theory.

Do you have a better explanation for how, when the custom navigation handling breaks, it can under some circumstances send you to an otherwise never surfaced data URI that, when decoded, looks like:

<body></body><!--tracking: $url_here$-->