Client 1.0.9 — Shift+Tab is back

Client 1.0.9 — the Steam Overlay is back

Back in 1.0.1 we switched the Steam Overlay off. Typing was breaking — dead text boxes at launch, dead text boxes mid-session — and every version of it seemed to trace back to how the overlay hooks into the client's renderer. Given the choice between a working keyboard and Shift+Tab, we took the keyboard.

That call was right at the time. It was also, as it turns out, based on a bad diagnosis.

What we got wrong

The evidence that convicted the overlay was that the typing repairs "didn't help". They didn't — but not because the overlay was beating them. The mid-session repair was triggered by the game noticing you'd focused a text box, and the entire fault was that clicking a dead text box doesn't focus it. The repair was waiting for a signal the bug itself prevented. It never ran. We read that as "the fix failed" when it was really "the fix never fired".

The repair that actually catches this now triggers on the click instead — which happens whether focus lands or not — and it has been running quietly in your client since the end of August, through every build since. It works. It just wasn't there yet when we blamed the overlay.

So: Shift+Tab works again

• The overlay is back — friends, chat, the web browser, screenshots, all of it, in-game.
• Achievement pop-ups return too. They always unlocked; now you'll actually see them.
• The repair that caused trouble is gone. The old fix nudged the window every single time you clicked a text box, and on a fullscreen client that could swallow the click you'd just made — that's what made the game feel unresponsive after login. It now only does that when a click has provably failed, and it waits until your click is finished first.

If typing breaks, tell us

We think this is right, but we've been wrong about it once already, and this is the one part of the client we can't test outside Steam. If a text box ever ignores your keys, say so in Discord — we can turn the overlay back off in a single build if it comes to that. We'd rather find out from you quickly than have you quietly restarting the client.

The update downloads automatically the next time Steam starts the game.

— Arkius