Steam Archives

How to disable Steam Pop-Up Ads on Startup

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I’ve been getting a tad tired of the sales notifications that show up whenever I start Steam on one of my systems. I had disabled this ages ago on my main computer but couldn’t remember where the setting was. Here it is: head over to Steam – Settings – Interface (that’s at the top left … Read more

How to redeem a Steam Key

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The Steam Desktop client has suffered some severe bouts of feature creep over the years. As such, I’m having a hard time doing the simplest things sometimes. Case in point: where and how do I activate a key I’ve been given. This relatively simple task could perhaps be a little more prominent, but alas it’s … Read more

How to take a screenshot with a Gamepad on Steam

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Steam has so many exciting hidden features, like native PS4 Controller / Dualshock 4 integration. I’ve been playing with its Big Picture Mode from the couch, and I’m loving it. Sometimes I’d like to take a screenshot and was wondering if there’s a way to do this with just the controller – and it turns … Read more

Running Stardew Valley without Steam (and the caveats it brings)

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I’ve been playing Stardew Valley for a few days, and I’m enjoying it a lot. I have the Steam version, and as I often do, I’ve asked Steam to not create a Desktop shortcut for my game. Shortly after I thought that might have been a good idea and created one by myself and pinned to to my Start Menu. All works well: Stardew Valley starts and I can play.

However, I’ve just LOST two days worth of progress because the Steam Client wasn’t running in the background. I have it disabled, because I genuinely dislike the idea of daily updates to a service I barely use, and because I’d like to run as little “background crap” on my system as possible (yes Adobe, I’m looking at you).

The Steam Client not running does not stop Stardew Valley from starting, or from running, or from saving. It all works rather swimmingly… until I started the Steam Client, at which point the automated cloud save implementation wiped out my Stardew Save – and hence I lost two seasons worth of progress. YIKES!

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