Also, some of these names remind me of this
this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2026
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I was shocked to learn that Steam group chats can be turned into pseudo-discord servers.
It’s obviously not a viable replacement for 99.999% of people but I thought it was wild it’s there today, hidden away. I wager most people had no idea (like me.)
The first time someone called me via Steam, I was really confused about what was causing the noise. I thought the game was bugged because I legitimately had no idea you could call people on Steam.
The thing that really shocked me is that you can stream to your friends list through steam.
It has weirdly good audio quality too, like noticeably better than Discord. If the Steam desktop app wasnt so heavy this could maybe be a good alternative. Maybe if they split out a separate app to use it without launching all of Steam.
My biggest gripe with it that makes it unusable as a serious replacement is that it purposely only stores conversation history for two weeks.
As for the heaviness you mentioned, it technically can be ran inside a browser but I agree a separate lightweight app would be more appealing.
Huh that actually makes it more appealing to me from a privacy perspective.
I can't remember the last time i actually (non-work-related) needed to go back and look at old conversations. Anything important enough to be referenced isn't data that should be kept in a chat app
Oh thats weird I'd never used it enough to notice that. Not a great choice.
I don't know if it's a standard feature or a setting you can adjust, but my Steam chats seem to disappear after a certain amount of time. If I can't keep a history of chat logs, then I can't use Steam as a Discord replacement.
Also, I have one friend who constantly spams our chat groups with random links and videos, no context. I kind of like having channels so I can filter some of that stuff into categories and keep some of our chats from being drowned out.
Group chats seem to stay forever, I had some I made off-hand like 6 years ago and they are still there lol