Option to disable or at least move "What's New" in Library Home.

[FalseChords]

2019 Edit: This was originally about removing the news section from Steam which previously existed as a way for gaming websites to spam our libraries. Since the recent update this thread has been used by others to voice displeasure about the update which replaces News with "What's New" so I've updated the title to match the current discussion.

The new UI update removes the old news section and replaces it with the "What's New" section of the Library Home. The Library Home page is meant to be customizable by allowing us to add and remove shelves but unsurprisingly, the What's New section cannot be moved or disabled and sits right on top of the page above all else. Always in the way and always taking priority over what some may actually want to see.

It's an improvement I guess. Probably the only actual improvement with this update but it's still not ideal. The "What's New" section really should be customizable. Let us move it, minimize or, or just disable it. No matter how useful it may be to see updates on the games in our library, some of us just want to see our games. At the very least let us move What's New to the bottom of our library page so we can have our games on top. I'm using the default format with What's New being forced on top, then all games, then recent games. I have to scroll down to see the full view of recent games every time I open the page. It would be far more practical to let me move "what's New to the bottom so my main priorities are immediately in full view upon entering my home page. Having What's New on top is inconvenient, impractical, and clunky.

We can customize it to an extent by clicking "Show less for this game" but that is impractical for those with large libraries filled with games they don't intend to go back to. Even if it only showed updates for games I played I'd still want it out of the way.



Original 2017 Topic: Why is gaming journalism forced upon us in the Steam Library? I want nothing to do with gaming journalism and it surprises me that it's not an option to remove this from steam. Stop forcing it on us and at least give us the option to disable it.

[FloridaGay]

Bad Idea. Steam wants these things so that more people will buy more games. Having news about games is not a joke when they are trying to sell goods.... Would you buy something without ever getting more info before you purchase it.... I doubt it.

[FalseChords]

Originally posted by Snapshot:

Bad Idea. Steam wants these things so that more people will buy more games. Having news about games is not a joke when they are trying to sell goods.... Would you buy something without ever getting more info before you purchase it.... I doubt it.

You seem to misunderstand. I am talking about the Recent News section in the game library which appears for games we already own. It's littered with pretentious gaming journalists giving their irrelevant and inflated opinions, lists, and unamusing articles all pertaining to the games we own. This primarily benefits the gaming sites and doesn;t encourage more sales since it's as I said, relating to the games we own.

I don't care about "big dumb crabs in Dark Souls 3", "Why photorealism is crucial to gaming", "why bad items in games need to exist", nor do I care to see why some random nobody journalist thinks a game is bad, average, or great.

I don't give a ♥♥♥♥ about RPS, PC Gamer, Kotaku, etc and I don't want to see their articles flooding my games library.

[Zefar]

I don't see this as much of a problem. Most games have DLC and Achievements which show up before and they will push any sort of news on that game away from your eye. So unless you actively look for it you won't find it.

Also there is this where you could just ignore it or switch to the other type of list. You can do that in the upper right part.

[Photo]

I find it a little annoying to, to be honest. I wish there was a filter for it to keep news such as "community announcements" regardings patches/updates

and remove things like 'Rock, Paper, Shotgun' - "It's only the weekly steam charts"
PCgamer
eurogamer
.. ect... pretty much everything under the 'SYNDICATED' section in news I don't want in my 'Recent News'

as Zefar said I could use an alternative view for the games, but that happens to be the one I like, plus I still want to see the updates for games. It's also the only view that shows achivements and has convenient links to things like workshops, discussions, store page, ect..

I guess the point is people like the option to customize. What is good for some is garbage to others.

[Toast]

Originally posted by Photolight:

I find it a little annoying to, to be honest. I wish there was a filter for it to keep news such as "community announcements" regardings patches/updates

and remove things like 'Rock, Paper, Shotgun' - "It's only the weekly steam charts"
PCgamer
eurogamer
.. ect... pretty much everything under the 'SYNDICATED' section in news I don't want in my 'Recent News'

as Zefar said I could use an alternative view for the games, but that happens to be the one I like, plus I still want to see the updates for games. It's also the only view that shows achivements and has convenient links to things like workshops, discussions, store page, ect..

I guess the point is people like the option to customize. What is good for some is garbage to others.

I found the most recent thread regarding this topic, so I wanted to put my two cents in. I completely agree, mainly in regards to Rock Paper Shotgun.

I think it's a joke that their "articles" are the most commonly featured in the news section. You could hardly call it journalism; it's really a joke that they continue to get the support that they do, when they don't even properly review ANYTHING.

I wish that there more variety of articles out there, but I suppose after a game is launched, you don't come across many "follow up" articles.

[Gus the Crocodile]

Originally posted by toast:

I found the most recent thread regarding this topic, so I wanted to put my two cents in. I completely agree, mainly in regards to Rock Paper Shotgun.

I think it's a joke that their "articles" are the most commonly featured in the news section. You could hardly call it journalism; it's really a joke that they continue to get the support that they do, when they don't even properly review ANYTHING.

Uh, they call their writers writers, not journalists. Seems to me that the main group insistent that everything be "journalism" are those who want to use the term to beat people over the head with when they fail to meet its imagined standards. Also, RPS review stuff all the time? At the time of writing this, the most recent seems to be Nier Automata.

So, you know, weird complaint, but I nonentheless think it'd be good for Valve to let people customise their feeds and details pages etc.

[Zek]

Necroing this thread because I've been looking for this forever, especially because lots of times there are spoilery headlines from these places. It's incredibly annoying.

But I finally discovered there's a way to disable, or at least hide, the news feed in the Library using a Steam skin, so anybody who's still interested:
http://www.filedropper.com/nonewsisgoodnews

Unfortunately it disables everything, still no option to hide everything but Community Updates, which I would vastly prefer.

Edit: Oh, or if you'd rather just do it yourself, make a new skin and modify the gamespage_details_news.layout file by commenting out (adding "//") the line: GameDetailsNewsContainer.ExtraVerticalSpacing "64"

[Sunman]

Originally posted by Zek:

Necroing this thread because I've been looking for this forever, especially because lots of times there are spoilery headlines from these places. It's incredibly annoying.

But I finally discovered there's a way to disable, or at least hide, the news feed in the Library using a Steam skin, so anybody who's still interested:
http://www.filedropper.com/nonewsisgoodnews

Unfortunately it disables everything, still no option to hide everything but Community Updates, which I would vastly prefer.

Edit: Oh, or if you'd rather just do it yourself, make a new skin and modify the gamespage_details_news.layout file by commenting out (adding "//") the line: GameDetailsNewsContainer.ExtraVerticalSpacing "64"

I just wanted to let you know this has worked flawlessly and immediately, i was already using the Publiclir skin and simply found the file you mentioned and edited out this single line you were talking about.

I never have to look at their "writing again"
I had enough after one of the writers kept winging about his anxiety order below my Subnautica game and constantly going on about it beeing the perfect safe space. Ughh

Big Horray for you !

[Zek]

Originally posted by Moonman:

I just wanted to let you know this has worked flawlessly and immediately, i was already using the Publiclir skin and simply found the file you mentioned and edited out this single line you were talking about.

I never have to look at their "writing again"
I had enough after one of the writers kept winging about his anxiety order below my Subnautica game and constantly going on about it beeing the perfect safe space. Ughh

Big Horray for you !

Haha glad it helped someone. <3

[Thiago]

I disagree, I like it, and it does not bother anyone.

[Zek]

Originally posted by thi:

it does not bother anyone.

I mean, no offense, but you wrote this after reading a thread of evidence proving that it's untrue, so that's kind of a dumb thing to say.

[Thiago]

Originally posted by Zek:

Originally posted by thi:

it does not bother anyone.

I mean, no offense, but you wrote this after reading a thread of evidence proving that it's untrue, so that's kind of a dumb thing to say.

It doesn't bother anyone, you just dislike it

[Zek]

Originally posted by thi:

Originally posted by Zek:

I mean, no offense, but you wrote this after reading a thread of evidence proving that it's untrue, so that's kind of a dumb thing to say.

It doesn't bother anyone, you just dislike it

That seems like an extremely arbitrary semantic distinction, but whatever makes you feel "correct".

Personally, disliking things bothers me. I think you'll find a great deal of people feel the same way.

[Zek]

Originally posted by Bud Fudlacker:

Solution isn't working properly. My CPU defaults to 30% usage when I use a custom skin.

Hunh, weird. Couldn't help you there, unfortunately.

[weaponspec]

I completely agree with you Draeth. I'm sick of it too, and I'm also refering specificly to the Recent News section. I want an option to remove it. What bothers me the most are those arrogant and intrusive headlines with their endless sense of chesee and insinuatingly offensive sarcasm!