Valve is always at work, trying to enhance the user’s experience with Steam. Those with Valve’s cloud-based PC gaming service can opt in and out of Beta sessions whenever they become available. Past Steam Betas have included UI changes- such as the current theme- the TV and “living room PC” optimized Big Picture mode, and recently the ability to share a Steam Library with others.
In the past, Steam has allowed users to pre-load games before their official release dates. While this does not grant early, pre-release access to games, those who decide to load a pre-purchased game will have the title fully downloaded and ready to play by the time it’s activated for the public. While this feature was made available to all Steam users, it was only capable of pre-loading games to the default library location on the user’s computer. As Valve announced earlier, the latest Steam Beta allows users to now pre-load games to any Steam directory on his/her computer.
Steam can be configured to download games to multiple locations, in the case that the user wants games on more than one hard drive; this can be done under “Preferences”- the same area where users can choose to participate in the current Beta. Before today’s Beta, users could only pre-load games to the default library, and not additional ones.
Along with the pre-loading update, the latest Steam Beta adds a new library interface to Big Picture, allowing users to browse through community screenshots. One of the newest features, In-Home Streaming has also been updated, as Steam users can now toggle between windowed and fullscreen displays, and resize game windows.
Again, the current Steam Beta is live, and can be opted into through “Preferences” within the Steam interface.