The new and improved Steam Chat is here to take on Discord — here's how the two apps compare

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If you've used gaming platform Steam's chat feature at any point in the recent past, you've probably noticed how outdated it was. 

With apps like Discord quickly taking over and offering people an easy way to talk to and message others while playing a game, Valve had some catching up to do with its aging chat system. The voice chat had poor-quality audio, there weren't nearly as many features as Discord or other chat apps, and the design felt dated and clunky. 

But now, in an effort to compete with Discord and keep gamers on their platform, Steam has released an update to its chat app, Steam Chat. The update takes many cues from Discord, including a suspiciously similar user interface — but is it worth ditching Discord for? 

We compared the two apps to see which is better-suited for use while gaming. 

Steam's new user interface is very similar to Discord's — they look almost exactly the same

Channels are separated by voice channels (for talking to people) and text channels (for messaging) on the left side of the screen. Members of each channel, and their active status, are shown on the right side of the screen. 

On Steam, the voice and text channels are initially only temporary, and will expire unless you right click on them and choose to 'save' them, after which you can choose a name and display image for the group chat. 

Discord's interface, although it looks similar to Steam's, operates a little differently.

What was called 'group chats' in Steam are considered 'servers' in Discord. These are free to set up, and anybody can start a server. Within the server you can add additional text and voice channels, like in Steam, but you can also add categories and drag whichever voice or text channel you'd like into them. 

Voice and text channels work the same in Discord and Steam: you can join one voice channel at a time, which will allow you to talk out loud to anyone in that specific channel. However, while you're in that voice channel, you can still open and send text messages to any of the text channels in the server. The two functions of voice and text chat are simply separated instead of existing in the same channel. 

All of your active channels are shown on the left side of the screen, while the members of the current group you have open are shown on the right side. 

In addition to servers, Discord allows you to make group chats with up to 10 total members.

These are separate from servers, and are intended for just a few friends who want to chat. The voice and text chats are combined into this window — as you can see in the image, the members of the voice call are shown at the top, while the group chat's text messages are shown below that. 

However, group chats also allow video chats — something that neither Discord's servers allow, nor Steam Chat in general. 

Both chat services allow you to direct-message with just one person as well. 

See Also:

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