What lasts a long time finally becomes… wider. After more than a decade of digital stagnation, Valve has finally unleashed the Steam store on the width of modern monitors. The store pages, previously constricted to a measly 940 pixels – a format that dates back to the days when CRT monitors roared – have been blown up to 1200 pixels. Welcome to 2015, at least.

Source: Winfuture

Squaring the widescreen

It’s no secret that the majority of Steam users have long been playing on 1440p, 4K or ultra-wide panels. Since the RTX era at the latest: if you’ve got the pixels, show them off. But until recently, the Steam store looked like an orphaned website from the era of DSL Light – squeezed into the center, UI-wise as sexy as a government form. Valve has now finally responded to the findings of its own hardware survey: more than two thirds of users are sitting in front of screens that perceive an old 1024×768 layout as a bad joke. The fact that this layout was still being tested in beta until 2024 almost seems like an anachronism with an announcement.

Cinema for clicks, Steam discovers the media space

The new width not only brings more air, but also new display modes. Screenshots and trailers are now displayed in a higher resolution, so anyone who advertises their games with photorealistic pathtracing or crisp textures can now display them appropriately. The “cinema mode” fills the browser or client window, while the “full screen mode” hides all UI remnants and puts the trailer in the center of attention, just like Netflix & Co. But that’s exactly what it is, a long overdue approach to modern UI standards. The only problem is that Steam doesn’t exactly shine when it comes to interface modernizations.

Indie developers can breathe a sigh of relief, at least a little

The “About the game” section has also been upgraded. Higher-resolution images, more flexible formatting, more space for content. This is not just UI cosmetic stuff, but can have a measurable impact, especially for indie studios. Because in a store controlled by algorithms, the initial visual impact is often more decisive than a Metacritic score. If you don’t have a huge marketing budget, you have to score points with your presentation. A screenshot that doesn’t look like a PS2-era thumbnail can make all the difference. For many small developers, this update is likely to have more impact than any Steam sale banner.

Technically half solid, half nostalgia

According to Valve, it even tested the new site structure on a “tiny old iPod”. Whether this was meant as a PR stunt or reveals the bitter truth about internal dev processes, we don’t know. The fact is that the new layout is responsive, also works on small screens and appears to be stable. However, the fact that a wider UI has to be sold as a “major design innovation” in 2025 is telling. Anyone who remembers the last major Steam UI overhaul in 2019 will recognize a pattern: long radio silence, then a big bang, followed by half a decade of UI hibernation.

What’s missing and what needs to come

The update is not yet the big picture. The start page itself is still unchanged, but Valve is talking about planned adjustments. And that is necessary. Because anyone who has whetted their appetite for a modern UX will soon realize: The store update is just one piece of the mosaic. The rest of Steam still looks like an artifact from the Source Engine era.

Conclusion

Valve’s Steam update is not a revolution, but it is a necessary operation on the open interface. The platform, which has long seen itself as the operating system of PC gaming, has finally modernized part of its UI foundation. A good thing, but also overdue. If you scroll too late, the algorithm will punish you.

Source: Winfuture