Steam adds more accessibility features
In addition, SteamOS devices are getting support for a screen reader. This feature has adjustments for the volume, rate and pitch of the audio output. The new beta also offers color filters for SteamOS devices, allowing the user to choose modes of grayscale, invert brightness or invert colors. This change to visual output with colors applies to both the Steam client and to games. For now, only the Steam Deck and the Lenovo Legion Go S run Valve's gaming-focused operating system, but the company is clearly planning to add more devices in the future.
"These new settings are only the first available of the accessibility features we're working on, and we're excited to put even more tools in the hands of our players," the company said in the blog post announcing the new updates.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Engadget
18 hours ago
- Engadget
Neon Abyss 2, a prison-break RPG and other new indie games worth checking out
Welcome to our weekly roundup of the goings on in the indie game space. It's been quite the busy spell, with several notable games debuting or landing on more platforms and some intriguing upcoming projects popping above the parapet. The Steam Automation Fest is taking place this week (it runs until July 21 at 1PM ET), so fans of games like Satisfactory and Factorio might be looking to pick up some bargains on similar titles. As well as offering a variety of discounts, Automation Fest also saw the debut of several new games. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. One of them is from a studio formed by the original team from the celebrated developer Zacktronics. The first title from Coincidence (with the help of publisher Astra Logical) is Kaizen - A Factory Story . This puzzler is set in 1980s Japan, and you're tasked with building popular electronics of the day, including calculators, arcade cabinets, personal computers and toy robots. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. Dawn Apart also arrived during Steam Automation Fest. This is a blend of space colony sim and automation sandbox set in a destructible, voxel-based world. Astra Logical is also publishing this project, which is from Industrial Technology and Witchcraft. Dawn Apart is available now on Steam in early access. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. One of the highest-profile indie games to debut this week is Neon Abyss 2 , from Veewo Games and Kepler Ghost. The original game has sold more than a million copies, so plenty of people will have been looking forward to the sequel. This time around, you can play with up to three friends in co-op. The game's creators are promising "unlimited item synergies" here, which is handy since there's an onus on creating overpowered builds in this action roguelike. Neon Abyss 2 is out now on Steam in early access. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. Ready or Not has been a hit on Steam since it arrived there in late 2023, and now Void Interactive's tactical first-person shooter has made the leap over to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. Here, you'll lead a team of SWAT officers in an attempt to restore order to a city that's become overrun by corruption and chaos. You can play the 18-level campaign solo or with up to five friends. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. Back to the Dawn is a story-driven RPG from Metal Head Games and publisher Spiral Up Games that's now out of early access on Steam. It has also arrived on Xbox Series X/S and Game Pass. As Thomas the Fox, you're an investigative journalist who has been framed for revealing government secrets and tossed into prison. You'll have to forge alliances with other prisoners in your attempt to break out. As part of Back to the Dawn 's full launch, Metal Head is introducing a new character, Bob the Panther, as well as a fresh storyline. I like the art style here, and the premise is pretty compelling. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. Thinking is cool and all, but sometimes you just want to turn down the volume on your brain and shoot a bunch of stuff. Kickback is an arcade bullet hell shooter with a fun twist: you can only move while you're shooting and, as the tile suggests, you'll be propelled backwards. I'm into it. Kickback — from Dot blood and publisher Targem Games — is out now on Steam. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. I'll be honest, I had no idea what Fretless - Wrath of Riffson was when I got an email from Steam this week telling me that this game, which I apparently had placed on my wishlist at some point, is now available. But hey, that name is an absolute winner. I appreciate the pixel art look of this turn-based RPG from Ritual Studios and publisher Playdigious Originals. According to the Steam page, you'll play "as Rob, a friendly musician trying to restore harmony in an off-tuned world where wacky villains are corrupting music." That sounds quite lovely, actually. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. I have absolutely no idea how Strange Scaffold does it. The studio behind I Am Your Beast , the brilliantly unsettling Clickolding and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown is about to unleash its seventh game in the space of two years. Co-Op Kaiju Horror Cooking is Strange Scaffold's first co-op game. The trailer makes it look delightfully chaotic, as players rush to cook meals to satiate giant monsters and stay alive. Co-Op Kaiju Horror Cooking is out on July 29, but until then you can play the entire game for free as part of a playtest. What's more, Strange Scaffold has announced two more games: Truck-kun is Supporting Me From Another World?! is a "chaotic anime-inspired vehicular action game about driving into objects at high speed to rescue the corporate ladder climber you accidentally isekai'd into a dangerous medieval fantasy world" while Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator is a "fast-paced stock market sim about buying, selling, and shorting stocks based on the simulated lives of adorable alien children." Beautiful one-line pitches. Zero notes. Can't wait for those, or to find out about another new game demonstrating a "unique method of developer collaboration" that Strange Scaffold plans to unveil next week. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. If you're hankering for more first-person parkour in a similar vein to Mirror's Edge, Neon White or Ghostrunner , Jetrunner might just do the trick. Riddlebit Software's platformer-shooter hybrid, which is published by Curveball Games, is coming to Steam on September 4. It looks like it could be fun! If the announcer's voice in the trailer sounds familiar, that's because the character is played by Matthew Mercer. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. I missed this one last week, but I just want to very quickly mention Ghost Haunting . The world needs more funny point-and-click adventures in the vein of those classic LucasArts games. Three Headed Monkey Studios and publisher Daedalic Entertainment have made a positive first impression to suggest they're ready to take that particular baton. There's no release date or window as yet, but this was an instant addition to my wishlist on Steam (let's just hope I don't forget about this one, eh?) To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. I would love to play a tour manager simulator game at some point, getting into the nitty gritty of making sure gigs and everything else involved in a band's life on the road goes smoothly. Rockbeasts is not quite that, but it still seems like it could be a good time. This is a "grungy" narrative-driven rock band management game from Lichthund and Team17. The trailer is fun and there are some interesting talents involved here. Rockbeasts was written by writer Jakub Szamałek, who was senior writer of The Witcher 3 and principal writer of Cyberpunk 2077 . Even cooler is that Iggy Pop voices on of the characters, who is named Iggy Pup. Love it. Rockbeasts is coming to PC and consoles next year.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Gabe Newell's daily routine is 'get up, work, go scuba diving,' says he's been 'retired for a long time' but works 7 days a week: 'The things I get to do every day are super-awesome'
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Gabe Newell, the co-founder of Valve Corporation and the driving force behind much of the company's unique philosophy, has had a much less public-facing role in recent years. Newell still turns up for things like the Steam Deck launch and official documentaries, but much of his time now is spent on one of his (several) superyachts, and on his other companies' projects: He co-founded Starfish Neuroscience, a company focused on neural interfaces (popularly known as "brain chips"), and Inkfish, a marine research operation. Newell also remains magnificently quixotic, popping up every so often to talk about things like when a shark went for him, and now he's re-surfaced to do an interview with a YouTube channel that has 19 subscribers (Valve confirmed to PCG that the interview is legit). Zalkar Saliev "shares powerful interviews and lifestyle stories with successful men across the US," and his channel has previously played host to employees of Amazon and Microsoft. And now Gabe Newell's on there: well, some short clips are on there, with a full interview to follow later. The ocean-loving billionaire is asked, "What is the daily routine for Mr Gabe?" I'd hesitate to call Newell "Gaben" to his face so Mr Gabe is quite the framing. "My daily routine," begins Newell, "I get up, I work, I go scuba-diving, work some more, [then] either go on a second scuba dive or I go to the gym and work out. I live on a boat so I just hang out with everybody on the boat. Then I work. "I work seven days a week: I'm working from my bedroom as you can tell. I like working, it's fun, to me it doesn't feel like work. The kinds of things that I get to do every day are super-awesome." Indeed, we can see from the clip, which alternates between Saliev's Macbook view and the camera feed, that Newell appears to be sitting on the end of his bed. The view makes it impossible to say for certain, but the IRL Saxton Hale is looking good for his age and more trim generally: clearly all the scuba-diving and gym-going has paid-off. Newell goes on to say that he's effectively retired, inasmuch as he only does stuff that interests him now, but the man's work ethic is clearly second-to-none. "I've said it before but, when you retire, you want to like stop doing your horrible job and go do what is sort of most fun and entertaining," says Newell. "In that sense I've been retired for a long time." Newell goes on to give some examples of what's currently taking up his time. "In one of the companies we're working on an aerosol pathogen detection device so you can see all the pathogens that are in the air. Brain-computer interfaces are incredibly cool and all of the associated neuroscience is incredibly cool." The upshot? Talk about life goals: "I just work all the time," ends Newell. "But it's not like 'oh my god I'm up late at night slaving away on stuff.' It's more like 'I can't go to sleep because I'm having fun', you know?" Expect more to come from this interview, even if Newell's current interests have moved (somewhat) away from pc gaming. Newell's spectacular success and unusual perspectives have created an intense cult of personality around the man's pronouncements, but as the above shows some of it is really quite simple. As a Valve exec once observed, Newell's real superpower is in how he "delighted in people on the team just being really good at what they did." Solve the daily Crossword
The Verge
3 days ago
- The Verge
Lenovo Legion Go S review part two: you were the chosen one!
Valve's Steam Deck has dominated the handheld gaming PC space since its 2022 debut. But even as more powerful Windows handhelds arrived to keep up with more demanding games, none have beaten the Steam Deck's combination of ease-of-use, ergonomics, power, and battery life at an affordable price. That still hasn't changed. The Lenovo Legion Go S with SteamOS is not the Steam Deck killer that some headlines would have you believe. This was supposed to be a moment for handhelds. When the Legion Go S was revealed as the first authorized third-party handheld to run SteamOS, with a $499 starting price, it looked like a true Steam Deck competitor was finally on the way. It even had the blessing and support of the Steam Deck's creators — something we'd never seen before. With an actual price of $599 and tradeoffs galore, the base Legion Go S with SteamOS is not a match for the $550 Steam Deck OLED. The more powerful AMD Z1 Extreme model is not half bad, but it's far more expensive at $829. But within the disappointment, there is some good news: it's better than the $730 Windows version with the same hardware that came out last February, and SteamOS is definitely a better experience than Windows. 5 Verge Score 7 Verge Score Back in February, I couldn't believe just how poor the Windows gaming experience was on this handheld's AMD Z2 Go chip. A $550 Steam Deck ran Cyberpunk 2077 faster on battery than a $730 Lenovo did while plugged in at maximum boost! And as usual, Windows was a pig: the less you know about the Windows out-of-box experience and wake / sleep issues, the better. Thankfully, SteamOS washes away the Windows stains. Imagine just pressing a power button to pause a game, then seamlessly resuming the next time you press it! Imagine simply picking a language and scanning a Steam Guard QR code to log into your handheld for the first time, instead of spending 45 minutes batting away upsells for Microsoft 365 Copilot and kin. And even though the Windows version has also (slightly) improved since I first tested it, the Legion Go S is so much faster with SteamOS: roughly 17 percent faster, in my tests. SteamOS's performance increase can translate to better battery life, too. On the Windows model, playing 2020's Assassin's Creed Valhalla at 720p resolution and 60fps at low settings required an average of 36 watts — enough to drain the Legion Go S's 55 watt-hour battery in 1.5 hours. But with SteamOS, the same 60fps gameplay requires just 22 watts, giving you an entire extra hour of gameplay (55 watt-hours divided by 22 watts = 2.5 hours) just by installing a different OS. Not all games see as dramatic a boost, but the same is true of Cyberpunk 2077: if you play at 50fps, you get up to an extra hour of battery life from SteamOS. SteamOS also makes it so much easier to change those power modes, map out new control schemes, and monitor your performance and battery life. You can simply hold down a button and flick a joystick to change your screen brightness or summon a virtual mouse, so there's no need to dive into menus. You can even install Decky, the unofficial SteamOS plugin loader, on a Legion Go S, to flesh out your Steam Library with game art or more easily install Epic Game Store titles. But all that is also true of the Steam Deck, which costs less, excels at games that don't require the horsepower of Cyberpunk 2077, and makes it easier to play decades of PC titles that weren't built for gamepad controls. The Steam Deck has two large, responsive touchpads that can emulate a trackball, pull up a radial menu, or each act as an extra set of four buttons to map your keyboard commands. The Legion Go S has a single ultra-tiny touchpad that puts up such a fight whenever I try to use it that I've already given up. The Steam Deck has four back buttons, enough so you can bind ABXY and never have to take your thumb off the right analog stick; the Legion Go S only has two. More importantly to me: perhaps because of these differences in controls, the Legion Go S is missing the mountain of community controller layouts that Steam Deck, PlayStation, and Xbox controller users have been creating for years. Those layouts, which map the games' commands to the controllers' buttons and joysticks, make it a cinch to play mouse-and-keyboard games on a handheld without the tedious work of figuring out a control scheme from scratch. On a Steam Deck, or on any PC with a common controller plugged in, those layout options show up automatically if you go looking. With the Legion Go S, the repository of custom controller profiles is totally empty. The Legion Go S's layout is nearly identical to Xbox, so why doesn't it pull up Xbox controller profiles at least? This honestly feels like an oversight, and I hope it'll be fixed. As I explained in my review of the Windows Legion Go S, though, this hardware does feel great. It's solid, reassuringly well-built, with my second-favorite screen on a handheld after the Steam Deck OLED. While it doesn't have the true HDR or deep blacks of Valve's OLED, the 8-inch IPS touchscreen makes the Steam Deck's 7.4-inch screen seem cramped by comparison, to say nothing of the 7-inch ROG Ally X. And like the Ally, Lenovo's 120Hz variable refresh rate can make for smoother gameplay, particularly on the model with AMD's Z1 Extreme chip. The Steam Deck's one notable disadvantage is that its performance has only slightly improved in three and a half years as games continue to get more demanding. Big hits like Expedition 33 and Baldur's Gate 3 have pushed it out of its comfort zone, and where rivals like the Legion Go S can unlock better performance when plugged into the wall or draining their batteries at very high rates, the Steam Deck can't. The Legion Go S officially brings those 'turbo' modes to SteamOS, as well. But if that's why you're buying, don't get the $599 Z2 Go model. It's not that the Z2 Go is slower than the Steam Deck overall. At max boost on wall power, the base Legion Go S can offer up to 35 percent better framerates. But the Z1 Extreme model offered up to 72 percent faster framerates than the Steam Deck and was 29 percent faster on average than the Z2 Go model. That's enough to make a game feel smooth that was barely playable — like Expedition 33 at the lowest settings — or comfortably go up an entire graphics preset in most games when you're plugged into the wall. (If you do plan to plug the Legion Go S into the wall, you may want to turn on fast charging in the BIOS — hold down Power + Volume Up when booting, then change Charging Speed Selection — and get yourself a 100W power adapter, because Lenovo's stock 65W adapter isn't enough to keep the battery from draining while you're playing full bore.) The Steam Deck OLED can't do turbo at all, but its custom chip can hold its own against the Z2 Go in unplugged 'balanced' power modes. When I capped both at the same 15 watt power draw, the Steam Deck won in Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and tied in Cyberpunk 2077, even as it lost in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Returnal. Another surprise in the Steam Deck's favor: I played a lot of fiendish mansion-building mystery Blue Prince while testing the Legion Go S, and it's far choppier on Lenovo's handhelds. I don't know if it's had Steam Deck-specific optimizations, but I found I needed turbo mode on the Z1 Extreme for it to run as smoothly as it does on the Steam Deck. If you do find yourself choosing between the two Lenovo Legion Go models, you won't sacrifice much battery life by picking the beefier chip. In my tests, the Z1 Extreme model only drew 1 to 3 watts more than the Z2 Go on battery power — we're talking about five minutes shorter battery life in the most intensive games and 15 minutes in less intensive ones. But in those less intensive games like Dirt Rally or Balatro, the Steam Deck OLED is still the champ. Despite having a smaller 49Wh battery, it lasted over 50 minutes longer than either Legion Go S in my Dirt Rally battery drain test (where I set each handheld's screen to the same brightness using a calibration tool) and managed two extra hours of magic poker game Balatro with battery-saving tweaks: 9 hours for Steam Deck vs. 7 hours for the Legion Go S. I have to hand it to Lenovo and Valve: after tangling with the Windows model, I thought the entire Legion Go S lineup was going to be dead on arrival. But that's not the case. Even the Z2 Go runs faster and more efficiently than it did on Windows, and the Z1 Extreme version is a legitimately good handheld if you get it with SteamOS. (You can technically install SteamOS on the Windows-based Legion Go S, but Valve tells me that's not officially supported, and I ran into several issues when I tried it in early June.) Valve and Lenovo have also moved swiftly to address some of the bugs the SteamOS version launched with. In the month and change since release, it's fixed wonkiness around the power modes and the variable refresh rate screen, and how both the tiny touchpad and joystick LEDs can sometimes stop working when the handheld goes to sleep. (We're still waiting on a way to control those RGB joystick LEDs in SteamOS, though.) But while you might be happy with the $829 Z1 Extreme model around your home or otherwise close to an outlet, it's not the best handheld you can buy. The Steam Deck OLED has it beat on price vs. performance and battery life for less intensive games, plus those community controller profiles and twin trackpads. It's the pick if you don't need beefy turbo modes or a big screen. You might also try installing Bazzite on an Asus ROG Ally X: I find it slightly less comfortable to hold, but with the same Z1 Extreme chip and a far larger 80Wh battery, it's a better option than the Legion Go S for intensive games away from a plug. Truthfully, though, I wouldn't buy any PC handheld at this particular moment. Lenovo's greatest achievement with the Legion Go S was to prove the superiority of SteamOS over Windows for handhelds, but prices are unusually high right now and Microsoft is about to fire back. Even if you have no interest in an Xbox Ally or Xbox Ally X this holiday season, it seems like Microsoft is finally trying to fix handheld Windows. I, for one, would want to know how the updated OS fares, and which devices will get it, before I buy a new handheld. Photography by Sean Hollister / The Verge
