How can I disable the Steam overlay to troubleshoot performance issues in my game during playtesting?

Disabling the Steam Overlay for Troubleshooting Performance Issues

Disabling the Steam overlay can be an effective way to troubleshoot and potentially resolve performance issues during game playtesting. The overlay can consume additional system resources, thereby affecting your game’s performance. Here’s a step-by-step guide to disable it:

Step-by-Step Guide

1. Open Steam: Launch the Steam application and log in with your credentials.
2. Access Settings: Click on the Steam menu in the top-left corner and select Settings.
3. Navigate to In-Game Settings: In the Settings menu, navigate to the In-Game tab from the sidebar.
4. Disable Steam Overlay: Uncheck the option Enable the Steam Overlay while in-game.
5. Confirm and Restart: Click OK to confirm your changes. It is advisable to restart your Steam client and the game to ensure changes take effect.

Additional Considerations

• Testing Improvements: After disabling the Steam overlay, observe any changes in FPS or other performance metrics during playtesting to verify if this step has helped.
• Other Overlays: Consider disabling additional overlays like Discord for further performance gains as all overlays can impact performance.

Code Example

// Quick command line setup for Steam launched games
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steam.exe" -no-browser

This setup can be used to launch games without the browser processes, which indirectly incorporates overlay functionalities within Steam executions.

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