Key Takeaways
1. The Steam Store layout has been widened from 940 pixels to 1200 pixels, improving the display of screenshots and trailers.
2. Pages will now adapt to different screen sizes, ensuring a good experience on both large and small displays.
3. Developers can now upload various media formats (.mp4, .png, .jpg, .webp, .webm) for their store pages, enhancing visual content options.
4. Valve is optimizing media for quality and performance across all devices, including desktops, mobile apps, and the Steam Deck.
5. The updates are currently in beta, with more Steam UI changes expected in the coming weeks.
Valve has revealed some fresh updates to its Steam Store, focusing on enhancing the user experience, especially for those using Steam on larger displays.
New Layout Features
The latest update has been released in beta form, increasing the width of Steam store pages and adding new media options for developers to better showcase their games. The most significant change is the width increase from 940 pixels to 1200 pixels, with the main content area expanding from 616 pixels to 780 pixels. As per Valve’s announcement:
“This improves the shopping experience in a number of ways, allowing for bigger screenshots and trailers, and allowing more room to describe your features in the written description area.”
Adaptive Design
Valve also pointed out that the pages will adjust properly according to users’ screen sizes, explaining:
“Of course, the page will still scale down appropriately for smaller screens or smaller browser windows.”
Along with the layout refresh, Valve is expanding the types of media files developers can utilize in the Steam store page descriptions. In the past, developers were limited to .gif files, but now they can upload .mp4, .png, .jpg, .webp, and .webm formats, with maximum file sizes of 100MB and a 12-second time limit. With these new formats, developers can now “show off your features, demonstrate specific game mechanics, or just add visual flavor to your store page.”
Enhanced Media Support
Valve has made these updates easier by handling transcoding through its Steamworks backend, ensuring that videos and media are optimized for quality and performance on desktops, browser windows, the Steam mobile app, and the Steam Deck.
This update is currently accessible in the Steam client beta, which users can find in the Interface tab under the Settings option. Valve plans to keep the beta version active for a few weeks to make further adjustments before the final public release.
Valve’s goal with these updates is to enable users to fully utilize modern screen sizes and resolutions while also increasing page load speeds for mobile and handheld devices.
Moreover, Valve has hinted that users should look forward to more Steam UI changes in the upcoming weeks, suggesting that this could be a sign of further enhancements to the platform, which has become the leading choice for PC gamers since its inception in 2003.
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