HELLO & WELCOME

[John Donovan]

I realize that this might not be well-known, especially if there aren't many gamers on this forum, but Steam, the biggest digital game distribution service for PC (through almost all PC games today are launched and played) has a voice chat feature, and you can even host a party chat (don't know the limit, though, most people I've had under the same party chat were 3). However, in my experience, the quality is really inferior to other services, and it has a lot of glitches (for example, one of my friends can't use his microphone on Steam, but all other services work fine).

If you've used it, what is your opinion on it? Do you happen to know the maximum number of people allowed under the same voice party?

[sheggy6]

One of the primary problems I have with Steam Voice Chat is its background noise, which is almost inevitable as a whole. Not to mention the quality of the voice chat is below the quality of Skype in my opinion.
As a whole, it's good if you're not too familiar with VoIP and want to avoid venturing out too much of your comfort zone.

[Samu Zadori]

Another issue I have with the Steam voice chat is that it crashes way too often. Futrthermore, on a couple of occassions I actually experienced cross-talk, which is when your call gets jumbled up with someone elses, resulting in you being able to listen to what they're saying! Has that ever happened to anyone else?

[John Donovan]

Yeah, totally forgot about the crashes. Our Steam party chat crashed so many times during gameplay that we've lost count. It's a really bad experience to be the last one alive in a team game and to rely on information from your teammates only for Steam chat to crash, leaving you alone against the enemy team. It's just no fun.

[pwarbi]

Like what's already been said, I'm not sure there's a lot that can be done about the background noise, I think that's the same with most voice chat services but I'm sure they can fix the reliability of it. Sometimes it's practically unusable, so much so that in the end I've just given up on it till I see or hear that it's been upgraded or fixed.

[Yosh]

I've used it a good fee times. Mostly just for chats between myself and a few friends. Most I've ever needed was 3 in a call. It's definitely not the best, but its so much less resource heavy then, say, team speak. It did cut out quite often though.

[bluegreen]

My personal experience its: meh! xD it has some issues but in the other hand it is good because its free... The most common problem I face is some glitches/bugs where your call goes down for some reason that cames from heaven xD and when you want to make a call with 3 or 4 other guys... there the problems are constant, you cant mantain a good conversation for more than 10min... And it requires a bit of internet and eats a bit RAM aswell... Overall I would give it a 7 out of 10

[Yosh]

Yeah, I forgot about the amount of data it took up, but it's still much better than the alternatives like skype.

[John Donovan]

My personal experience its: meh! xD it has some issues but in the other hand it is good because its free... The most common problem I face is some glitches/bugs where your call goes down for some reason that cames from heaven xD and when you want to make a call with 3 or 4 other guys... there the problems are constant, you cant mantain a good conversation for more than 10min... And it requires a bit of internet and eats a bit RAM aswell... Overall I would give it a 7 out of 10

You're totally right about the RAM usage! That thing takes up more RAM than a bloated Google Chrome full of toolbars. :laugh:

Let's be fair, though, it's not really Valve's thing to polish their stuff. I mean, Steam still works as slow as ever, and it's 10 years old now!

[CrowdedHighways]

It has worked very well for me. I am not an avid gamer, but I do play games from time to time, and Steam video chat has never failed me or lagged.

[bluegreen]

My personal experience its: meh! xD it has some issues but in the other hand it is good because its free... The most common problem I face is some glitches/bugs where your call goes down for some reason that cames from heaven xD and when you want to make a call with 3 or 4 other guys... there the problems are constant, you cant mantain a good conversation for more than 10min... And it requires a bit of internet and eats a bit RAM aswell... Overall I would give it a 7 out of 10

You're totally right about the RAM usage! That thing takes up more RAM than a bloated Google Chrome full of toolbars. :laugh:

Let's be fair, though, it's not really Valve's thing to polish their stuff. I mean, Steam still works as slow as ever, and it's 10 years old now!

I would like to keep this conversation main theme but you made something explode in my mind: steam is slower than a freeking snail crawling against a airbus turbine :P
And yes, if you have a 2RAM pc (cough cough like me cough cough) you will feel the difference when you turn on steam voice chat. I can tell you that when I play DOTA 2 and I am using voice chat if I click the windows button to go the firefox I can tell you that the game won't simply reopen xD I will have to restart it :P

[chelsknits]

I realize that this might not be well-known, especially if there aren't many gamers on this forum, but Steam, the biggest digital game distribution service for PC (through almost all PC games today are launched and played) has a voice chat feature, and you can even host a party chat (don't know the limit, though, most people I've had under the same party chat were 3). However, in my experience, the quality is really inferior to other services, and it has a lot of glitches (for example, one of my friends can't use his microphone on Steam, but all other services work fine).

If you've used it, what is your opinion on it? Do you happen to know the maximum number of people allowed under the same voice party?

I've actually never even heard of this service before but now I'm definitely going to go check it out! Thanks for sharing this information.

[Kessen]

Steam voice chat can be summed up in one word: TERRIBLE. It seems to consistently have poor quality, unexplained white noise and general unreliability.

When gaming I always have Skype or Mumble open to connect with others, Steam voice chat just isn't worth the hassle.

[bluegreen]

Steam voice chat can be summed up in one word: TERRIBLE. It seems to consistently have poor quality, unexplained white noise and general unreliability.

When gaming I always have Skype or Mumble open to connect with others, Steam voice chat just isn't worth the hassle.

I don't agree xD it's tearrible but not that terrible for it's price: it's free xD don't be so mean man... Quality is good if you have 3 or 4 guys in a chat room ;) and it's very user friendly :)

And yes, lately I've been experiencing some white noise but I think it was temporary because yesterday I made a room with 3 more guys and it was fine!