Steam is taking the fight to Discord with a new Chat service that makes it easier to communicate with teammates.
Chat can be used for voice and text, negating the need for third-party services, and it’s (obviously) designed with gamers in mind. It’s also headed to iOS soon.
Steam has allowed players to send each other messages for a long, long time. But for voice chat during gameplay, third-party services like Discord and even Skype have been the preferred choice for many PC gamers.
Steam hopes to change that with the launch of its new Chat service, which is now out of beta and available to all.
Steam Chat makes communication simple
Chat lets you communicate with all your friends on Steam, either by text or by voice. It supports dedicated channels for your favorite games or topics, as well as inline videos, pictures, tweets, and more.
You can create groups quickly by dragging and dropping friends from your contacts list, which can now be sorted based on the games they’re playing. It’s easier than ever to see who’s playing what.
What’s more, you don’t even need to use the Steam application to use the Chat service. If you’re playing a game outside of Steam, you can load up Chat in your web browser and access all of its functionality from there.
Steam Chat is coming to iOS
Valve is also working on a standalone Steam Chat app for iOS that will make it easier to keep in touch with friends on the go.
We’ll have to wait and see whether Steam Chat still stands a chance at stealing users from Discord, which has already become so popular. It will certainly be a simpler solution for casual gamers, but it might be too late to convince others to make the switch.