[SUGGESTION] Option to disable new item notifications

[Cray]

1) Lots of games will shower you with items just for launching the game or killing an enemy. It's ridiculous and goes contrary to whatever purpose they might serve.
2) They occupy the notification area meant for communications, and the letterbox in steam mainwindow. Messages and comments shouldn't be cobbled with trinkets.
3) Many of us understand them as useless trinkets that do nothing, they're just a nuisance that needs to be checked off and cleared from the notification area.

I really just want to play my games, I don't want to be distracted or spend time on all the metagame kid stuff nonsense of cards and achievements - by common practice their value is now inflated at best.

[CJ HUNTER]

Steam -> Settings -> In-Game -> "Enable the Steam Overlay while in-game" (uncheck that checkbox and you're done, no more distractions)

[Cray]

Originally posted by CJ HUNTER:

Steam -> Settings -> In-Game -> "Enable the Steam Overlay while in-game" (uncheck that checkbox and you're done, no more distractions)

Thanks for the tip, though I must confess I did this months ago, disabling all notifications to get some peace during competitive multiplayer. Unfortunately they still come popping up when I go back to desktop.

[Cray]

Re-wrote the post to be more specific about what notification area I was talking about.

[Rhagius]

These garbage item notifications need a way to be disabled, they are ruining the game experience and now they even break my games when playing, since they just stay on the screen rather than disappearing.
Or even better: give me the option to completely disable getting items and tradingcards! i don't need that♥♥♥♥♥♥in my life
turning off overlay is a ♥♥♥♥ solution too, since you have to give up all the utility of the overlay just to get rid of these annoyances

[Cray]

Agreed. There are many of us now who are getting tired of how the platform we use to purchase, launch and play games is trying to become the "facebook of gaming", while grabbing users' attention and making as much of a fuzz of itself as possible.

This is a software distribution platform. We pay for it with every purchase, and still it's belabouring us with all kinds of secondary and tertiary nonsense we don't get any control over.

Items, trinkets - all just pixels on a screen. Still crammed in alongside the messages from your friends.

How can I make it clearer? We just want to play our games, and not be annoyed by an artificially created environment of chained distractions that only serve one real purpose - maximizing steam microtransactions and the time people spend on steam.

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

I'm sorry, can you explain a little more in details to be 100% clear about this.

By " They occupy the notification area meant for communications, and the letterbox in steam mainwindow " , are you referring to what popup on your screen when someone message you, friend playing a game, friend coming online, someone added you, chat invite, group events, group invite, screenshots, or achievements from the game? Like this???
https://imgur.com/fJeZ2Wz

OR

Did you mean getting a notification, in your notification that can only view when looking at the client, or visiting the broswer on the website to see the notification, to see who added you, or who invited you, letting you know got new items in your inventory, reply comment to a discussion that you're subscribed to, gifts from someone, unread chat messages that you missed? Like this???
https://imgur.com/gD5UHwQ

I'm assumming you're talking about the achievements that are poping up, as items for inventory does not popup on your screen, but this is what I want to be sure of which you're complaining about.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

May I ask what games shower you with items for playing the game?

[Cray]

Originally posted by Dr.Shadowds 🐉:

I'm assumming you're talking about the achievements that are poping up, as items for inventory does not popup on your screen, but this is what I want to be sure of which you're complaining about.

tldr; achievements pop up ingame, items occupy the letter icon in steam main window, also used for unread messages. Beyond that, while the details and specifics might seem unclear, the main topic is how there's no way to control this.

Distractions you don't want and can't control, it's kind of annoying. I'm used to this being a distribution platform, not the circus it occasionally behaves as these days.

I guess I could be clearer and make a post about generally removing distractions and annoyances, though I hope the main subject here comes through.

[Cray]

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

May I ask what games shower you with items for playing the game?

:qr:

Many. I can not be bothered going through the 100+ games I have to find out which did what, and that's not really the topic here.

[Yael]

Still relevant. Thanks to item notifications I am largely ignoring Steam notifications entirely.

At least, notifications should separate potentially irrelevant events like new items from communication events.

[RelaxItsJustAGame]

It's incredibly frustrating there's no way to disable item notifications.

[Cray]

Originally posted by Aaron:

It's incredibly frustrating there's no way to disable item notifications.

Even moreso that steam staff had the following convo during a friday meeting:

dev6: "How can we add more meta-crap to the games?"
dev1: "We need virtual cards and icons for doing stuff in the game."
dev2: "Do they add any new gameplay or contents?"
dev1: "No they're just for show."
dev3: "Should we make a distracting fuzz about it so it seems like these things actually matter in any way?"
team: "Yes."
dev1: "How about we use the message notification area for that?"
dev4: "dev1 is really paying for himself today, guys. Yes! So much yes!"
dev5: "Do we add an option for disabling this or something, in case someone is over 12 and doesn't care about this pointless pixel glitter?"
*awkward silence*

About as valuable as those paper diplomas you'd get in primary school for "being a participant".

[Bloo Alien]

I've been looking for a way to disable achievement notification popups in game for ages now. Still cannot to this day accomplish what should be a simple checkbox in preferences. Nothing I've ever tried makes them go away. Highly frustrating for something that has no valid reason to be forced upon anyone, and which ought to be dead simple to implement a toggle for.

[Cray]

Originally posted by Bloo Alien:

I've been looking for a way to disable achievement notification popups in game for ages now. Still cannot to this day accomplish what should be a simple checkbox in preferences. Nothing I've ever tried makes them go away. Highly frustrating for something that has no valid reason to be forced upon anyone, and which ought to be dead simple to implement a toggle for.

It warms my heart that people necro'd this :) (not sarcasm)

Remember when they decided everyone should have spellchecking thrust upon them in their private chats (and english spellchecking, in international chats..) with no way to turn it off? The sheer, multi-faceted ineptitude of that feature roll-out.. Took them long enough to add a toggle for it, and only after people from <every country> complained for a week or three.

Not sure how much crying it's going to take to make them realize that this feature is an annoying facet of crappy UI design and ought to have a toggle or separate corner, too.

[Bloo Alien]

Originally posted by Cray:

Originally posted by Bloo Alien:

I've been looking for a way to disable achievement notification popups in game for ages now. Still cannot to this day accomplish what should be a simple checkbox in preferences. Nothing I've ever tried makes them go away. Highly frustrating for something that has no valid reason to be forced upon anyone, and which ought to be dead simple to implement a toggle for.

It warms my heart that people necro'd this :) (not sarcasm)

Remember when they decided everyone should have spellchecking thrust upon them in their private chats (and english spellchecking, in international chats..) with no way to turn it off? The sheer, multi-faceted ineptitude of that feature roll-out.. Took them long enough to add a toggle for it, and only after people from <every country> complained for a week or three.

Not sure how much crying it's going to take to make them realize that this feature is an annoying facet of crappy UI design and ought to have a toggle or separate corner, too.

Well, in addition to totally breaking any immersion that "immersive" games shoot for, there's a framerate stutter every single time there's an achievement, entirely because of this stupid popup coming up over the game, and what's worse, on my system there's a bug with the achievement notifications where they literally never go away until I quit the game and restart it, so yay... That's fun. Especially in games where the lower right corner of the screen holds some important game related display element.

On top of that, the only really truly promising solution I had found (creating a custom Steam skin) is utterly ignored by the Steam client, so not only can I not disable these vile popups, but I cannot even relocate them to a less intrusive area of the screen, either. Innit fun having optional "features" forced upon us? Golly gosh, yes it is! Loving every minute of it! Thanks, Valve!

(Yea, that last bit was totally sarcasm, for those who can't read my "tone of voice" here.)

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm actually really happy with a ton of what Valve's done in recent years. Proton's been an especially nice little boon for me, as I'd picked up a few Windows-only games in some Linux game bundles I'd bought, and had bought one or two on purpose just because I knew for a fact they ran well in WINE or in some nice modern open source engine, but now thanks to Proton, most all of those games are just "click 'n' run" simple with only a rare few exceptions. Thanks, Valve! (NOT sarcasm on that "Thanks" at all!)

That having been said, some Steam features should absolutely be completely OPTIONAL and SHOULD have a toggle in the preferences to disable them. This is one such feature. Too many people like you and I have entirely valid reasons to want to disable it. A quick search around the Steam forums and the web turn up a BUNCHA complaints about this exact issue goin' back MANY years. So annoying that Valve's actively fought against implementing ONE simple little checkbox to disable such a hated "feature". I wonder if anyone has a valid explanation or reason why this particular buggy mess should be forced upon so many folk who don't want it, or who want the option to toggle it off/on easily. It's not like an interface redesign, where disabling it would require having an entire "classic" skin to fall back to. It's notification popups, which are totally trivial to disable completely or by category.