This is unbearable, Valve...you're incorporating a new video recording system into Steam. Excellent! But as a result, the desktop version of Steam has lost the most important button next to the big green “Play” Valve is hiding my screenshots.

This may have something to do with PTSD. Once upon a time, I owned a MacBook Air and loved that laptop; no Windows laptop had a trackpad that good. It didn't weigh much at all. Battery life was great for the time. However, there were some things about the Mac OS that I couldn't stand. In particular, Apple liked to hide all my files, as if seeing “.jpg” would immediately give me the plague. It was easy enough to see my phone photos in the Photos app, but to find the actual files, I had to search through the dreaded rows and rows of folders.

One of my strong opinions about computers is that you don't have to dig through to find shitty files like “User > Wes > .temp > astuvkcaqcf > 4748949585”.

Apple may have gotten better in the years since, I don't know. But seeing Valve on the same path makes me want to pick up my PC and walk straight to the ocean. I live about 2 miles from the ocean, so it takes a long time to carry a 30 lb or so desktop, but on the plus side. However, having this PC will ensure that I can sink to the bottom of the ocean where Steam's screenshot interface can no longer hurt me.

For years, the screenshot window has included a powerful button, a simple vehicle for raw, efficient digital scrapbooking. Click this button, and all the screenshots you've taken of individual games using Steam will appear directly in the Windows Explorer window. Easy! Steam's other features have always been less useful to me: since I don't post on the Steam forums, I rarely want to upload my screenshots to the Steam cloud; I don't need to use Steam's screenshot management window because if I take a screenshot, I just want the .jpg, or a whole handful of them, to upload to this website.

Now, Steam's latest beta has pulled in a simplified interface that clearly favors Steam Deck, and the browse function to jump to that folder with a single click is gone, replaced by a share button. Also, previously you could right-click on an individual image to jump to the file's location. This too is gone, furthering Valve's trend of having all the computing take place within the app, with little recognition of the computer on which it is installed.

Nothing has done more to plague computer interfaces in the last decade than the “share” button. It is the ultimate esoteric UI design, the “click this and you can't actually do anything, but it opens up a list of other things you can do that previously had their own buttons.” Via the share button, Steam now allows you to click “save images” one at a time and choose where on your computer to save the screenshots.

But Valve, it's already on my computer. Where is it? Where did you put it?

For now, the old interface remains on the non-beta branch of Steam, but I have a request to Valve: please don't make Steam a victim of the age of interface design obfuscation. Sometimes the old-fashioned way is the best way. I would even embrace a return to skeuomorphism if it was the only way to bring back the simple click action I crave. If that's what it takes, just make an animation of the screenshot window rolling open like a file cabinet full of manila folders. Give me back my button!