Have you noticed something different about Steam lately? With the advent of Discord as the go-to chat platform for gaming, Steam is sprucing up its own chat platform to compete. After updating to the latest Steam version, you might notice that the client now has an updated layout, and a few neat features to boot.

Indeed, this is the new Steam Chat service that Valve is rolling out. Back in June, the company was working on a beta of the service, which featured a chat layout eerily similar to Discord’s own. The chat service is now live for all Steam users, though, so you can check it out from today onwards.

Going into some of the new features, the first is that your friends list is now more flexible. Friends can now be grouped by games, favourites, or parties. Specialised group chats are also available, if you’re looking for something similar to Discord’s servers. This makes it easy for you to identify the right friends to interact with based on what you’re in the mood for.

Chatting on Steam is also now multimedia friendly. You can share videos, gifs, images, and tweets seamlessly now. Additionally, group chats will also feature channels, where you can create sections for certain topics of discussion. As you can see, these are features which already exist on Discord, but they are convenient additions nonetheless. It’s worth noting that Steam also encrypts any voice or text passed through its servers to keep you safe from network attacks.

Like Discord, Steam will also has a web-based version of its chat service. If logging into Steam is a hassle, or just not available, this is great for you.

Valve has put a lot of effort and resources into overhauling its old chat service. Steam Chat is miles better now, but we’ll have to see whether this can truly bring back the 130 million folks who have migrated and adapted Discord into their lives.