It Looks Like A Steam 64-Bit Client Could Finally Be Near

Written by Michael Larabel in Valve on 8 August 2018 at 06:56 PM EDT. 33 Comments
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It looks like Valve could be prepping to finally ship a 64-bit Steam client, possibly coinciding with their long talked about Steam UI/UX overhaul.

Valve today shipped a new beta release with just one listed change, "Added support for shipping different binaries to 64bit vs 32bit operating systems in Steam self-updater. This support is being added in preparation for future updates."

The ability for the Steam update to ship different binaries depending upon architecture would be a prerequisite for being able to introduce a 64-bit Steam client while retaining the 32-bit client too... They don't explicitly say it's for shipping a 64-bit Steam client soon, but it's 2018 after all, and there wouldn't be much of a reason to otherwise be adding this capability to the Steam updater...

While this next part is speculation, it could presumably coincide with Steam's introduction of broader user-interface improvements that have been teased months ago. These changes are also coming now that the new Steam chat functionality has graduated from beta.

Regardless, it will be interesting to see what happens with Steam over the weeks/months ahead. Also on the horizon is the long-awaited SteamOS 3.0 beta most likely based off Debian 9 "Stretch" packages.
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