Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
Discussions Rules and Guidelines
Report this post
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/10/1745643015563656613/
And see Medical issues.
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta/discussions/3/1642052612841407353/?ctp=37#c2978530049570168798
Thank you and have a good day.
Edit: this is "list view", greenraven22 was referring to.
It was also my my layout of choice, as it was lean, fast, no animation, just all the info i wanna have on one screen (user defined cathegory, game title, last played, cloud stored, install disk, needed diskspace).
Assume for a second they won't be able to reinstate the old UI, what kind of changes need to be made to the new UI for you to be pleased with it?
An overview with size, categories, status and nothing else? Especially as this thread is about medical issues, clarity is needed.
It's difficult to say exactly why the new UI triggers a sensory overload, but it's probably a mixture of these elements :
- Too much blur (everywhere).
- Too much contrast between images in the library.
- Too many elements in the UI.
- Scrolling too much fluid or too much choppy (due performance). Both are known to cause motion sickness.
Even only one of them can cause issues in susceptible people. Of course the majority of users are unaffect, but for those affected the correct use of the new Steam UI can range from "moderate painful" to "impossibile".
A possibile range of solutions can be to :
- Add an option to disable most of the blur in the background or in the UI elements.
- Make an option to disable the shelf at all.
- Add an option to configure how the scroll works (with or with a set amount of "steps").
too much color can inflict sensory overload leading to migraine or to anxiety for people in autism spectre. there has to be an option to make game thumbnails less colorful (some black-white filter, opacity)
micro stuttering of loaded game thumbnails has to be completely removed - page with games has to load in one piece, at once, without stutters, jumps and popping dozen of new thumbnails per second. it's painful. make it synchronous, take pause to prefetch all thumbnails, push it to page at once. let users to change library colors.
make a selector in settings if a person wants to have synchronous or asynchronous load of pages, selector for a color filter and selector to load list view for those who prefers it.
Even after hearing of the possibility of the new Steam client being a cause for migraines, I didn't believe it straight away. I didn't credit Valve with sufficient incompetence or malice to actually push an update live with problems this severe. It wasn't until I'd actively tested and confirmed it that I was willing to accept it (assuming incompetence over malice). I've been complaining about OTHER problems since more than a year ago, and when I found out this was happening, it escalated the severity of my complaints. Support have NOT handled it even adequately, let alone well, to the point of telling me to hurt myself as a condition for receiving support.
Other than Steam, the only migraine triggers which have been identified in my case are UV sensitivity and blunt force trauma to the head. Even the latter of those two frequently takes longer for the first migraine symptom to appear than looking at a PC with Steam running. Also, Steam is more consistent about triggering migraines than the other triggers I know of.
What I can confirm is that whatever Steam is doing to me is visual, but not dependent on the client window itself being visible. I won't be affected if I'm not looking at the screen of a nearby PC with Steam running, but will be affected if I look at the screen even for a few minutes (sometmes seconds). I also won't be affected if an exclusive fullscreen app is running, but if it's borderless I will. Even if the Steam window is hidden behind another app, or the software is running as a hidden taskbar icon, that will be enough for it to trigger a migraine, so whatever it's doing is, at least for me, affecting more than just the client window itself.
As for solutions and workarounds, Big Picture Mode doesn't fix the problem, and Small Mode requires extra steps to be taken in addition to use of that mode. As the closest to a supported workaround, Small Mode is unacceptable, given that it not only locks out core functionality (including download management and even the ability to uninstall software) as well as becoming a health hazard easily on a single misclick or when attempting to use any of the functions not provdied in the mode - there's no way to prevent it from automatically reverting to being harmful if you attempt to do something which requires a full-sized view mode. Since finding out that the Steam client was a problem, the only ACTUALLY SAFE workaround I've been able to use was to revert to an older client version. As of June 6th (the change was made in late May, but that's when it started affecting my copy of Steam), I have been ENTIRELY denied access to my account by having this workaround disabled. I have made it clear, because it would be medically unwise to do so, that I will not install the new client until it is confirmed that the problem has been addressed in an update, in spite of support staff threatening to deny me service unless I do so. This means that for more than a year, I have been denied any supported method of accessing my account safely, and for almost 6 months of that time, have been entirely (and illegally) denied any safe access to content I own legitimate licences for.
I've been talking to relevant authorities and working my way through legal channels to try and reach an appropriate remedy, but this has been taking more time than I'd like. I have also done my best to maintain contact with support regarding this issue, but have been refused any response about the problem for more than 3 full months in spite of having valid legal ground to demand a refund instead of waiting for it to be fixed. I am going to keep making my voice heard everywhere I can until there is a proper resolution.
And on a related note (to the topic in general, not how incompetent the non-response to this issue has been so far):
It's worth noting that in many cases, both performance and layout issues are potentially valid CAUSES FOR the medical issues being caused by the client. One of the leading theories about (one of) the way(s) the client is triggering people's medical condisions - which includes migraines, epilepsy and vertigo - is that it's causing unstable framerates in the PCs it's running on, which would be a performance issue affecting the entire system but caused by the Steam client. Similarly, several potential migraine and epilepsy triggers are included in the layout/design of the UI. Also here, have another thread on the topic which addresses both those points, among others, and isn't one of the ones already included in the OP:
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta/discussions/3/1658943116231004154/
To end on as close as possible to a positive not here, though, it's good that there's finally an actual public statement about this, even if it's only from one of the mods, and not an official response from Valve directly. I'll definitely need to see more than JUST this (once again, for obvious reasons), but it's a start. Thank you, KillahInstinct.
The new library actually causes me physical discomfort and things like the font, spacing, horizontal buttons (instead of a neat vertical list), the colours, the "fatness" of it, the negative space, all combine to cause anxiety on a subtle level that builds the longer I use it.
I'm still in the habit of opening Steam every morning (regardless of whether I have time to play a game or not) but I no longer browse up and down my game list the way I used to. I don't have Steam as a preparation/coping mechanism for difficult times anymore, in fact it acts inversely to the way it used to, with regards to my psyche. I know some people don't consider this a high priority, but to me it's quite serious and I suspect I'm not alone.
Needless to say I don't use the shelves, ever, because being bombarded by colours and poor performance causes me a level of distress similar to being in a crowded room.
From my experience - First the laggy scrolling motion, you drag the list and it takes a moment to catch up and settle in place. Causes disconnect with where your brain and eye expect the list to be and the added problem of you have to keep readjusting. I think they put a maximum scroll speed in or something so can't speed or jump through? It also seems to 'skip'. Feels buggy or wrong to me. I found this means have to scroll through a few times up and down to get were wanted and made browsing practically impossible or disorientating and for some I certainly can believe this to be seasickness inducing.
Seemed to me you need to know Exactly what you are looking for And remember it's name so you can type it. Sadly this also made the small 'improvements' like sorting and refining by genres or making lists/shelves useless to me. Scrolling through, browsing and searching, is a horrible experience.
Best you can do to try improve the list view is disable everything and no browsers launch into small mode but I agree with most this is a step backwards. We use to be able scroll through even Huge game library's even WITH pictures and everything with no lags or slowdowns and all perfectly responsive in the 'old' client so it's clearly bugger all to do with people's setups ect. It's something that's been changed with how the program runs, displays, caches or whatever.
I find the same issues with scrolling the tiles view too but also they're pictures so eyes I'd expect need to stop to some degree to register each picture and move to next, even with the trends simplifying cover images like most FPS games having covers with the back of the protagonist. Plus all the colours collage and varieties of fonts since most of the covers are just fancy game titles anyway. I didn't use tile view so much myself but previously it was landscape oriented tiles which I find improve flow of eye across them but now they're vertical. I'd think that exacerbate the issue of eyes stopping on each picture meaning maybe lots of additional micro muscle motions. Could be cultural differences here.
Again something to do with way caching or downloading is handled now but it's much slower populating images.
Personally find the layout cluttered and unintuitive. I think for me at least seems to lack 'focus'. Difficult to explain but attention drawn all over and view darting all over place all the time plus throwing in community stuff in just makes that worse. If eyes are darting all over and struggling to focus it maybe like struggling without glasses leading to eyestrain and headaches.
Wasn't really sure which thread I should put this in particularly as I'm kinda saying the layout and performance issues cause the probably medical problems and I'm no expert in any. Just my feedback.
Since Valve added showcases with animated gifs, this has become a big problem: an epidemic of gifs with bright flashes and iridescent rainbow colors, animated fractals. Someone else's profile can be ignored, but the new library filled with same trash can not!
I won't talk about the rest of the design, it's long and useless(and partially explained above) - since the summer of 2013, Valve has completely ignored user-players, they add many functions, but they have not brought one to an acceptable and stable status - these functions do not work in whole or in part, there are many bugs.
The old design was comfortable and calm, the black design was less comfortable, but still calm, especially with the modification that removes the bugged gradient.
The new blue design with a lot of css gradients is terrible for eyesight (you remember that now all monitors and TVs are LCD screens of various modifications and quality, and the flickering blue color of the LED backlight is harmful by itself), megatons of css gradients terrible for speed, at 80% users, it even can NOT be physically displayed WITHOUT discomfort for vision.
Yes, Valve, more than 80% of your users do NOT have high quality monitors over 30"calibrated with special equipment and suitable for prepress, SUDDENLY!
And it has NO any REAL USEFUL settings - Fonts scaling, gpu-rendering, DirectWrite - give random unpredictable results and depend on hundreds of factors.
Previously, when Gabe had a serious vision problem, Valve took care of the eyes of the users, but after a successful operation and treatment (performed for OUR money!), They didn't care about us anymore. As professional designer, an official STS volunteer-translator and beta tester since 2010, I can see it perfectly, and for quite some time.
My solution was simple: i stopped buy in Steam, because simultaneously with the new design, prices have increased significantly, and the quality of service and supervision of those who publish in it have decreased by the same amount.
+Used hacks to switch to minimalistic mode, not install more than one game at once (otherwise client completely IGNORE library settings and turn into visual HELL)
An important issue: they use CEF and don't seem to be able to control it in any way, resulting in blurry fonts and images, parasitic requests from Google's built-in debugging and spyware modules, overloading the communication channel, servers that slow down performance.
They use Windows and are also unable to deal with it - all the problems and client bugs are completely synchronized with Windows and Chrome updates. When I block updates, the problems disappear for several months, until Valve changes the server-side code to solve new problems from Win and Chrome updates - then the problems come back and I have to update and look for workarounds. Or just wait - many things in their service just don't work for half a year.
Especially dont break more rules if you want to be heard. It looks like the person spamming was banned now..
I too am on the spectrum, plus I have astigmatism. Even WITH my corrective lenses, the "new" Steam Layout hurts my eyes. Before the October 2019 downgrade, I only ever used the OLD Detail View. The font was readable and didn't hurt my eyes, the info I wanted (workshop, achievements, installed DLC) was all in easy-to-find tabs with spacing that didn't hurt my eyes, and the Library actually loaded on the page of the game I had last played.
I have made the new UI tolerable (JUST) by removing all shelves except Recently Played and by routinely hiding the stuff in What's New, but unless I'm downloading an update, I only use Steam in Small Mode now. It really is that bad for me.
I've done the same with the shelves and What's New, I've also reduced the size of the right panel to as small as possible and the list to as large as possible (50% of the width each), reduced steam to as small a window as I can. My goal has been to "try to get used to it" as suggested by people who tend to not believe that people have disabilities. Needless to say, after months, it hasn't improved. At this rate I might resort to small mode, myself.
About those new threads:
"Yeah. Let's kill and ignore the one year + of tens of thousands of posts about the several serious issues with the new UI and make new threads. Now that the new UI is one of the reasons that made Valve lose a lot of ground to GOG, Origin and EPIC, and that they're sick and tired of complaining since beta-testing a year ago, let's re-start fresh new threads."