I've been looking around for Discord alternatives because I feel the platform has slowly been getting worse and worse over the course of time and am generally unhappy as its been going. My friends in my private Discord server have been having multiple issues with it and are open to other platforms to look into for the future. I looked at TeamSpeak, Guilded, Mumble, Element, the FOSS Discord alternatives (Revolt, Spacebar) and while TeamSpeak and Spacebar are actually kinda close to what would be desired, I realized Steam already has practically everything Discord offers other than 3rd Party Bots for moderation. So my question would be: why not, Steam?

Steam Groups, when private, function fairly similarly to a private Discord server and surprisingly has a very friendly layout, with text and voice chat allocation easily accessed and separated (and with working embeds!!!). There's already public broadcasting, and while I'm unversed in coding or programming, I imagine video calling or P2P streaming could possibly be implemented without significant issue, though this is a completely baseless claim. The official Discord servers for a lot of games could easily just have an official Steam group in comparison, and the marketing aspect is practically baked in without a super sleazy approach like "Quests" or "Gifts" that require a subscription.Barring p2p streaming/video calling, personal customization is a big one. But Steam already has a large source of customization from Steam Points, so it'd be a cinch to integrate in my eyes.

Steam has the practically the entirety of what Discord has to offer, but it's not a compact experience. Heck, maybe even splintering off of the Steam software and having a standalone that links to your Steam account would be better, but that's another topic entirely. And yes, the market already have many VOIPs and chats and all this variety, but Steam is the defacto central source of PC gaming. Plenty of people would still use Discord, but the enshittification of the Discord experience continues whether people are happy with it or not.

What do you guys think?