Steam has cemented itself as the largest digital game shop in the World. First, release all the way back on September 12
th, 2003, it was meant to be a standalone software client aimed to deliver updates to Valve’s games. It was soon expanded to include titles from third parties.
The greatest Steam expansion and its popularity started in 2004 with the release of Half-life 2. Steam allowed prepurchased editions to be downloaded before the official release of the game making it available for play the moment it was officially out.
Very soon after Steam gained its popularity, Valve has opened doors to other developers and offered them to use Steam as means for a digital distribution platform. Today it hosts over 30000 different game titles, not including DLC or applications.
And how soon Valve’s steam deck is coming out soon we would like to share some great tips and tricks about Steam itself for easy everyday gaming.
Steam guard account security
Security of any of your accounts should be something that you really take seriously. So as always use a strong password for Steam but if you want an extra layer of security for it, and you should, use the Steam built-in feature: Guard Account Security.
In order to activate Security Guard go to
Steam>Settings>Account>Manage Steam Guard Account Security. Once enabled you will be able to use the Steam mobile application for special code when opening Steam or your email address.
Use Steam beta feature
Once a Steam account is created by default you will download and install the client. In the client, you will have the latest features available but there are more Steam features than default ones, beta features that can offer some improved and new functionality, and do not worry, they are stable and bug-free.
I have been in Steam beta for years and not even once have I had any issues with the client itself but I have always had the latest features that will come to regular users later.
To enable beta participation to go to
Steam>Settings>Account, open the drop-down Beta participation menu, and choose Steam Beta Update. Confirm on OK and restart the Steam client. You will now get all the latest features first.
Manage your library via Collections
The collection is a neat idea for organizing your large game library into different collections or sections easily expanded and contracted for easier navigation and organization. To add the game to a collection just right-click on it and select
Add To>New Collection, make a name for a collection like action, RPG, or whatever rocks your boat, and you are done. Once the collection is created other games can be added to it simply just by dragging it into the desired collection.
Make shelves
Shelves are ways to see your collections in the larger areas of the Steam clients. By clicking
Add Shelf>Choose a Shelf, you can now add your collection to a shelf on the larger part of the client as a horizontal scrolling container with your chosen games. There are also some predefined shelves like All Games, Recent friend activity, and more.
Hide Game from Library
By right-clicking on a game and selecting
Manage>Hide This Game you will remove the game from the active view of your Steam library. Note that the game will still be owned and a part of your library, you will just not be able to see it.
This is a great feature when for example you have some things that came as a part of the game pack you are not really interested in when you have 2 different versions of the same game as for example standard and deluxe edition or just by simply not wanting to have game visible in the library.
You can find a hidden game by typing its name in the search box and from there you can unhide it.
Play game soundtracks inside Steam
Some games offer you to purchase their soundtracks if you like music from them and some even include OST with a regular purchase. Steam lets you play these soundtracks and even lets you import your own music library folder into it in order to play all of your music inside the client itself.
It has even options to automatically stop music playing once the game is run and you can make playlists as well. Your purchased game soundtracks are automatically included, the rest you will need to add by pointing Steam to the folder where you keep music in.
Configure gamepad
Inside Steam, you can configure your gamepad’s general settings, big picture settings, desktop settings, etc. Steam embraced the idea that many OC users these days own and play with gamepads so it has implemented configuration options inside it. To configure your pad go to
Steam>Settings>Controller.
Use big picture Steam mode
Big picture mode is Steam's idea of making Steam an entertainment center. Once it is activated it switches from the application into full-screen mode aimed at large TV screens or monitors. You can easily navigate through it via gamepad, mouse, keyboard, or other devices.
You have access to the store, your game library, etc. Same as your typical steam app but a little different. You can easily activate it via
View> Big Picture Mode and see for yourself is this something you prefer over a standard application layout.
Enable Steam Cloud
Steam Cloud is a great feature that uses cloud storage to save your game progress meaning that you can easily switch to another PC, install games there and continue where you have left off. Many games support this feature instead of keeping saves locally and it is a great feature worth turning it ON.
To turn and use Steam Cloud service go to
Steam>Settings>Cloud>Enable Steam Cloud Synchronization. Just remember to check does game you are playing supports this option.
Share your Games via Family sharing
Family sharing is a Steam feature allowing you to share your game library with up to 5 accounts on up to 10 different devices. This is a great way to let other members of your family or even close friends enjoy some games you have or vice versa. They will get as well their own save games so you can sleep safe knowing that your progress can not be changed or hindered.
Family sharing can be turned ON by logging into PC Steam client where you would like to share your library and navigate to
Steam>Settings>Family and then clicking on Authorize Library Sharing On This Computer.
Refund a game
Sometimes the game is not the same as advertised, sometimes it will not work on your PC, sometimes hardware specifications are too high making the game unplayable, etc. For whatever reason, you might have Steam offers you a full game price refund if you wish to do so, you only need to meet 2 criteria, the game must have been purchased within 2 weeks period, older purchases cannot be refunded, and your game playtime must not be over 2 hours of game time.
If you fit into this category all you need to do in order to get the full money back is going to
Help>Steam Support, pick a recent game from the eligible list, and ask for a refund.
Gift a game
As you can buy gifts for your friends or loved ones in real life, Valve made sure you can do it in digital as well. Gifting game via Steam is simple and straightforward. Choose a game you wish to gift, go to your shopping cart and instead of clicking Purchase for myself, click on
Purchase As a Gift, from there you will be taken to your friend list to choose to whom you would like to gift a game along with the option to write a little note to the receiver like happy birthday, enjoy or whatever.
Stream games in Steam itself
Although Steam is not there yet in streaming as Twitch or Facebook gaming is, there is an option to stream your game sessions on it. Click on
Steam>Settings>Broadcast to make all adjustments and start streaming.
You can also watch streams from your friend list and Steam is now broadcasting popular streams directly to its client if you want to watch it.
Take a game screenshot
By pressing
F12, you can take a screenshot from any game and save it inside your Steam cloud library. You can change of course this default screenshot key via
Settings>In-Game and if you would like to see your screenshots you can always do it under
View Screenshot Library on a game’s page.
That’s it, our Steam tips and tricks for easy and good gaming life, I hope to see you soon on errortools.com for your daily articles, tips, and tricks.
As more and more people get into insider preview of upcoming Windows 11 we will see more and more different takes and opinions on it.
Generally speaking, the first wave was quite positive when it was previewed but how time is passing more and more limitations and frustration comes to the surface.
Some of the limitation that is inside it, which have been confirmed by Microsoft itself includes features missing that we had in Windows 10 like moving the application to the taskbar in order to pin it, moving the file in the taskbar to open it in default application and some big annoyances like Windows opening widgets always in Edge no matter what is your default browser. Not being able to move the taskbar from the bottom is also one of many illogical things.
There is not really a point in these missing features since they were working fine in Windows 10 and many users liked them since they could customize Windows more to their liking, now with this new look at limitations it reminds me personally much of apple macOS and I will be honest, I am not a big fan of that kind of thinking.
If I wanted that kind of OS I would have gotten myself a MAC, not custom build PC, but hey, Linux is always a free alternative, and how Microsoft itself is pushing limitations and in my opinion bad design choices along with awful system requirements that might just be a case for a lot of users.
I am really not sure what is logic behind these moves and I am sure they have their reasons but this time it seems that their take on the new OS is not resonating well with the overall user population, well at least what I have heard so far. Things of course can still be changed and made for the better and I would rather see release postponed and issues addressed than getting more system hogging and limited new OS that at its current state looks like reskinned Windows 10 with limitations. 
The greatest lag and server crashes are pinpointed to game-creating events. When a player creates a new online game, the server needs to pull a lot of details from the database and make a game, due to some legacy code present this process takes some time and it is demanding a bit on the server-side, and although code was optimized to cater to more modern approach some legacy code still remains.
Another thing that was spotted to affect performance itself is player behavior, to be more specific, modern gamer behavior. Where players find good builds and runs on the internet and then go to farm-specific areas or bosses for loot or experience points, which in return boils down to making plenty and short runs that are made by creating games and after run eliminating them. Now pair that with the previous statement about legacy server and database code and you can add 1 and 1 and see how this might be an issue.
A lot of short games over legacy code are placing games in a state it was not designed for back in 2001 and therefore we have issues. Sadly solutions without completely rewriting the whole code are not very promising and they include rate limiting, which will prevent players to create many games in succession in a short period of time and maybe even login queues to drop a load on servers.
Blizzard reached to people in the whole company, even old diablo 2 developers to ask for advice and they say that they are working on solutions so they could lift limitations and have everything running fine. 