Animated profile backgrounds should be disablable.

[StickNardoragon]

I've noticed this weird thing with Steam. if I open a profile with an animated background, CPU usage skyrockets. Especially noticable when I'm streaming - OBS drops about 50% of my frames with an animated background open, even if I close the Steam window. You have to exit the profile entirely by going to activity feed etc before closing the window, or the animated background still renders.

P.S. Why are they even so intensive? It uses more RAM than Minecraft lmao!

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

All animated stuff should have a toggle imo.

At least avatars have it in the friends list.

[[?]legit]

I have noticed this with the animated avatars. Something seems to be broken there. Hopefully they can fix it!

[B l u e b e r r y P o p t a r t]

This has been a problem since dev were allowed to have animated gifs on store pages and yet was never addressed. This has only gotten worse with all the new additions to gifs and animated stuff users are allowed to use.

All of it needs to be toggled on/off if people don't want it or simply their computers can not handle it.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Originally posted by B l u e b e r r y P o p t a r t:

This has been a problem since dev were allowed to have animated gifs on store pages and yet was never addressed. This has only gotten worse with all the new additions to gifs and animated stuff users are allowed to use.

All of it needs to be toggled on/off if people don't want it or simply their computers can not handle it.

Agreed!

[StickNardoragon]

Originally posted by B l u e b e r r y P o p t a r t:

This has been a problem since dev were allowed to have animated gifs on store pages and yet was never addressed. This has only gotten worse with all the new additions to gifs and animated stuff users are allowed to use.

All of it needs to be toggled on/off if people don't want it or simply their computers can not handle it.

It's strange because, my PC should be more than capable of running it. I've zero issues with running games like Cyberpunk (despite its bugs, I get a solid at least 50 FPS on a five year old setup), yet as soon as Steam decides to throw a gif profile background up, my framerates drop considerably. Hell, I can have three youtube videos open at 1080p and it takes up less RAM. It doesn't make any sense to me?

[Supafly]

Anything that plays, animation, film or music should be disabled by default AND have a toggle. That includes videos on store pages, the animated gifs and user profiles

[FFL2and3rocks]

Yeah, I don't understand why it performs so poorly compared to other things, but I can hardly stand browsing the points shop due to how sluggish the page is.
There were similar problems with the new library layout but at least that had extra options to disable for better performance.

[м]

Originally posted by Dead Monkey:

Anything that plays, animation, film or music should be disabled by default

i disagree.
being able to toggle it from on by default to off would be fine, but not the other way around.

we have 2021.
if people have such ancient hardware, and that's probably the minority of users, that a simple animation causes such big differences, it's probably about time to think about upgrading.

disabling it by default would be a way back, honestly.

/

checked it again to be sure...

https://i.imgur.com/xlR9S1E.png ram goes up by like 100mb as i thought

https://i.imgur.com/nfLVscW.png cpu goes up from 4% to 12% and then back to 4% in less than a second

https://i.imgur.com/u8BHSUL.png gpu goes up from 6% to 30%, so that's probably the main issue for older pcs...

[Supafly]

Originally posted by м:

Originally posted by Dead Monkey:

Anything that plays, animation, film or music should be disabled by default

i disagree.
being able to toggle it from on by default to off would be fine, but not the other way around.

we have 2021.
if people have such ancient hardware, and that's probably the minority of users, that a simple animation causes such big differences, it's probably about time to think about upgrading.

personally i see maybe 100mb RAM change (what is the average now? 16GB?) with animated backgrounds and about 0,5% cpu.
it's nothing.

disabling it by default would be a way back, honestly.

That's like saying make all privacy setting Public by default and you can toggle them private.

Not just about hardware. What about internet speeds and data caps? I have 500mbps up/down and unlimited data but as an ex web designer I understand building stuff for data efficiency. Something that is no longer considered and why I left the sector. Just because I have those speeds and unlimited data does not mean everyone else does. In rural area here some struggle to get 1mbps and autoplaying animations eats through it. And animation doesn't look good when it's jerky and buffering.

Example. Actually happened....more than once. I'm listening to music coming from PC speakers. I load a webpage before moving away from computer, door, toilet, make a rink, let the dog out etc

BOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Loud auto playing advert more than double the volume of my music because the Ads are autoplay by default. I've had a Baby in the next room that I only just got to sleep and deliberately had music low and not using headphones so I can hear if she wakes. Thanks autoplay for waking my baby.

So no, Autoplay should default OFF. That goes for Steam and everything else....Web wise not an issue now as I use noscript addon and edit Firefox settings to prevent it.

[м]

Originally posted by Dead Monkey:

That's like saying make all privacy setting Public by default and you can toggle them private.

privacy has nothing to do with people using outdated hardware in 2021.

Originally posted by Dead Monkey:

Loud auto playing advert

you could just use adblock or ublock origin, etc?
and since steam profiles have no sound or music it's not really something you can compare.

also, people come here to play games, right?
so, what kind of computer can handle games, but not a simple gif / webm animation?

that doesn't really make sense to me, sorry.

[[dustbowl.tf] jh34ghu43gu]

Please add this already, my DSL can't handle opening these animated profiles in overlay without tanking my ping to the 800s+. Or at least let the steam browser cache these so it doesn't download every ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ time, there's only like 20 that people regularly use anyway.