I've been facing this issue in the past week where I open up steam, and if I press the "Friends and Chat" Button on the bottom right of the steam window. Nothing pops up. The button does not work.

Then I go to the Friends button on the top left of the screen, click it and it shows "View Friends list (0 Online)". But in that same menu, if I press "Add a friend..." and go to "Your Friends", I see all 75 friends in my list.

I cannot accept invites from anyone, I cannot message anyone. The entire Friend-Chat-Interaction is broken.

I've tried a variety of things like: Restarting steam, signing in/out, deleting cache, check for client updates, went to a friend's profile and pressed the message button, it showed the windows loading screen and then nothing happened.

I actually tried to change steam accounts thinking the issue would remain, but it didn't! It is somehow an issue for my account specifically...

I saw the patch notes for Steam Client Update and this was the only change to the Friends & Chat System : "Fixed some "Friends & Chat" settings occasionally resetting to their default value temporarily after getting disconnected from Steam".

Has anyone experience this issue? or found a way to fix it?

EDIT: Added the account steam change attempt