Valve has started rolling out beta client updates for Steam from new years and has introduced a number of features including a slew of new broadcasting improvements, an official in-game frame per second (FPS) counter overlay along with other fixes.
The updates includes enhanced video play back on OS X and Linux, reduced CPU usage under the hood while video playback. The new update also brings in improvements to Steam’s Broadcast feature added recently.
The new FPS counter will essentially count the frames per second while playing a game which will ease the dependence on third party tools. This in turn will help save a lot of system resources and ultimately customise the in-game settings to get the most out of users’ experience.
In order to use this handy new Steam feature, one has to be opted in to the Steam beta program, which can be done via the Steam client’s settings menu. Go into the in-game menu, and click the box most likely to add an in-game FPS counter to your screen. When you do fire up a game you can see your frame rate on the top left of your screen.
January also brought along the news that Steam had hit a new record for the most concurrent users, logging upward of 8.5 million users. Steam logged a whopping 8,512,376 concurrent players, smashing its old record of 8 million from June 2014. DotA 2 led the charge with just under 900,000 players online, followed by Counter-Strike: Global Offensive with around 300,000, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Team Fortress 2 constantly swapping third and fourth place.