1) Sell you games and apps… lots of em'!

Valve will take all of your money and you will never be happier in your life. 19.99$ games for 5 bucks, super specials with 80% off and massive sales for every occasion possible. You get a lot of games for ridiculous prices on the best platform to manage, store and play with your digital goods while Valve makes a shitload of money; everybody wins so hard in this, it's incredible. Valve is shameless about taking your money with Steam They announce their sales on the Store front, add lots of graphics to make sure you see them and if that doesn't work, there's a big splash window with today's special every single time you open Steam by default. So Steam is about selling you games –some apps too- but mostly games to be the biggest online digital marketplace. EA is fighting back with Origin, but no offence guys, if your games were available on Steam, I'd buy it there; you still got me to use Origin with SimCity and my girlfriend with The Sims 3 though (obviously). Sell, sell, and sell, quickly, fast, easy!

2) Manage those purchases effortlessly

So, you have 56 games in your Library (15 of them you just bought 2 hours ago because of a sell) and they got your money: now GTFO because they don't care about you anymore. Well, it turns out that they make the after sell experience even better. They really care about you and it shows. You are updated about your game whenever there's a change, you can install them wherever you want to, the games gets auto updated and they will make sure to track and give you all the tools/mods/user-content you need to extend the life of your game. You are not only getting a good deal when you buy your content, you're sure that you will get awesome service with it for years down the road. Easy to install, easy to move around, easy to update and to keep playing with it with all the achievements and content for years.

3) Be a gamer's paradise.

Valve is pushing sales and community with Steam. Workshop is one of the most amazing things I have seen in my life. When you passed most of your childhood extracting ZIPs, managing addons and sending links to friends to make sure they got all of the Garry's Mod stuff required, Workshop makes 5 years ago looks like the dinosaurs age. Forums are active, you can chat with your friends in and out of a game with the awesome overlay that gives you a freaking in-game web browser when you need it, news about your game, etc.

Note

Yes there, will be a lot of spelling mistakes, unfortunately you will have to leave with it. The goal was to put out the information of my research, not to write a perfectly check novel.

Most of the designs are a 1366x768 window.

This research project or I are not affiliated with Valve in any way.









ANALYSIS

Steam does not need to be “fixed” or has major problems like, let's say, Windows 8. Even Windows 8, with all of its quirks, is an amazing operating system that I love using, so imagine what I think of Steam. However, a small visual and reorganization update would make Steam a lot more fun to use.

On the Interface part, the use of gradients, half-opacity elements and textured diagonal lines are very dated. Valve redesigned their software only a couple of years ago and it looked fantastic when they first released it, but the modern design language is growing thanks to Microsoft with Metro, Google with their recent updates and even Apple jumped aboard the clean design train with their weird iOS 7 refresh and OS X. Steam could lose some of these extra/useless visual garnish to make sure that the UI gets a little bit more in the back so that users could better focus on the Store, their Library and the Community features. Make the content the interface.

Beyond the visual design, Steam is also suffering from poor app organization and a lot of repetitive navigation. There are too many unclear menus to do the same task all around the app and this makes it more difficult for a user to say “Here is everything related to navigation”. You need one place where every menu and options are so you don't end up lost looking all around the application. On top of that, controls are repetitive witht he same option found at multiple places and they are taking crucial space and clogging the interface; less space, less content for the users and less stuff to showcase from your store without scrolling. A quick example would be in the Library where you have a whole line with view options and a tiny plus on top of the scrollbar. Yet, there's a View menu right on top. Same thing with the bottom bar, taking a significant amount of vertical space (knowing that we are in the widescreen age with operating systems that have horizontal navigation) for options like the Friends list and picture that could be placed somewhere else and an “Add a game” button when you have a Games menu right on top. I know that they are trying to make things simpler by giving more options, and I am a big proponent of giving more options to users, but not when you lack a central navigation and you end up having a very repetitive navigation.

Social features are also poorly implemented. On the bottom right you have a link to your Friends list and the online count, on the top is the basic account settings and next to it is a unified notification center. Part of the main menu includes a link to your profile and social links. All social features are thrown all over Steam and common interactions like clicking on your profile picture to change it are not present. There's things to be improved there too.

One of the worst problems in my opinion is the Search. Search is extremely important for a software like Steam. You search through the Store, you search through your Library, you search through Forums, through Workshop, Friends, etc. Yet, there is no central Search Bar. In the Store it is on the top right, in the Library on the top left, in Community on the right sidebar and so on. Steam is begging for a central Search Bar that would work depending on what you are looking at and where you are in the app.

Now I understand that a big part of Steam is just a browser frame pointing to the website -I get it, it's easier- but I still strongly believe that the Store should have more love and focus. The Store is the key aspect of Steam, the objective is to sell you as much as possible and the Store could really be more organized and boosted with features. A lot of screen space is lost because of the web-frame-in-an-app approach and it's just sad for such a big and important piece of software. There is a way to fit more information, more features, bigger and more beautiful content and make sure that users have a better view at everything in the store. At the end of the day, you just query your database, get the same info and nearly the same page, just play with the CSS and maybe get 2-3 extra picture for the front-page and you're good to go! Selling digital goods is the primary mission of Steam and an extra minute of work per day for a way better Store is worth it.