Just wondering. It seems harmless enough as it only really adds an fps counter and allows for use of the steam browser. I’m avoiding it just in case, though.
edit: Found out Diablo III has a built in fps counter so this topic no longer relevant as I no longer have any reason to consider using the steam overlay.
If it’s not part of the game, then it’s probably not allowed.
Ah, okay. I only wanted to use it for the fps counter, but I found out there’s an in game fps counter so now it doesn’t matter. Thanks for the help!
Really sort of depends on what it does. If it automates activity, then absolutely not. If it creates exploits, nope. If it makes chatting easier or makes the screen easier to view… probably OK.
The Steam overlay is permissible, but with a caveat. While in general overlays are “allowed”, they do tend to cause problems with games, especially Blizzard games. The end results are usually performance issues and/or intermittent disconnects. As a general rule it is best not to use an overlay with Blizzard’s games, but they are allowed. You’ll see just about every streamer using an overlay for example, though most streamers are also technically savvy and have equipment that can more than handle overlays or they use a second PC to capture the stream and do the overlay there, leaving the primary PC and display unencumbered.
Technically speaking no according to TOS, but in reality no one cares, what harm can it do?
Apparently a certain thing that displays maps is an overlay (I think? I was told that anyway) so that is cheating by displaying info not given in the game to everyone else.
Any overlay that displays game info not available in game would not be allowed.
Right. AFAIK, the main overlays used (Discord, Steam, MSI Afterburner) don’t display anything out of the ordinary. Not sure what mechanism the Steam overlay uses for its FPS counter - could be something as simple as a GPU/frame buffer poll, though that would create a slight performance hit on a lower end system.
Usually Steam overlay isn’t used for itself, but instead it’s brought in for the Big Picture mode functionality, which lets you “add” an external non-Steam game into Steam, which one would do if the game lacked native controller or device functionality (e.g. someone wants to play D3 with a controller but can’t normally because of lack of built in functionality in the PC client).
I’m sure others exist to cheat with, but the only overlay I know of off the top of my head that’s used with D3 for those purposes is (was?) THUD.
In any case, overlays almost always introduce problems with complex games and as such are best to avoid.