Prevent games from taking control of mic/headset audio when Steam Voice Chat is using it

[Thrawn]

I ran into this with Resident Evil 6 yesterday. Basically, the awesome thing about Steam Voice Chat (SVC from now on here) is that it will independently use your "default communication device" as specified in Windows audio settings, and let game audio be piped through your surround sound, but have SVC only go through your headset mic and headphones - which is awesome.

I had just played through all of RE5 with a friend using SVC, and it worked great. However, with RE6, Capcom got the "bright idea" that they were going to use their own voice chat. Portal 2 has the same problem - it uses its own voice chat system.

**MAIN PROBLEM: SVC is too nice. It gives up control to any exe or game that demands access to your microphone.

What I'd like to see is an option in Steam to make the SVC more agressive. If I'm talking in an SVC with someone, then start a game like RE6, or Portal 2 that has its own voice chat, I want SVC to not hang up and give mic control to the (usually crappier) game-based voice chat.

I do 95% of my steam gaming with people in my friends list (and are therefore available for SVC), not random people that I join up with through the game itself.

RE6 is particularly poorly designed in which it doesn't even have an option to disable voice chat at all. Portal 2 at least will let me do that. However, NEITHER game will allow SVC to function at all. If I try to start an SVC with someone in those games, it just shows the mic with an X over it, basically telling me that "another application is already using the microphone."

[Satoru]

That's a windows thing. Its not a Steam thing. Windows conrols what device has control. If the game says it needs to be "X" then Windows sets it to "X".