for first, have you tried to ask people whether you can be heard?
for second, it is a feature. Go into options to disable it

Yes, I've asked if I can be heard. They can't hear me. I have disabled the Steam overlay but that is just a work-around. It's acceptable, I suppose. But I'm basically unable to command because you really need a mic for that.

Originally posted by Gay4Ellis:

I have disabled the Steam overlay but that is just a work-around. It's acceptable, I suppose. .

workaround for what? you never said first issue is connected to steam overlay, and I highly doubt it is

Disabling the Steam overlay is, of course, a work around for preventing the bug where my music and sound effects stop when opening the Steam overlay. It does not address my issue with the microphone ceasing to function when commanding.

Originally posted by Gay4Ellis:

Disabling the Steam overlay is, of course, a work around for preventing the bug where my music and sound effects stop when opening the Steam overlay.

you must have missed second part of my message. This is not a bug. This is simply a game option that is enabled by default. You may re-enable steam overlay now

You must misunderstand the problem. When I close the Steam overlay, the sound does not come back. The game becomes unplayable because I cannot hear guns, footsteps, commands while running around the map. It does not only happen while the overlay is active. Once the overlay is opened, the BUG is that the loss of sound is permanent. This is definitely not a feature even if the initial loss of sound is. The sound should be restored after closing the overlay.

As for the mic issue, it turns out that the commander has a separate key bind for the microphone. I don't see how that would be useful but I set the key bind to be the same as marine/alien and now it works.

Originally posted by Gay4Ellis:

You must misunderstand the problem. When I close the Steam overlay, the sound does not come back. The game becomes unplayable because I cannot hear guns, footsteps, commands while running around the map. It does not only happen while the overlay is active. Once the overlay is opened, the BUG is that the loss of sound is permanent. This is definitely not a feature even if the initial loss of sound is. The sound should be restored after closing the overlay.

you didn't try to check if changing option would fix that, didn't you?

Originally posted by Gay4Ellis:

As for the mic issue, it turns out that the commander has a separate key bind for the microphone

nice to see "bug" is fixed here :)

Originally posted by Shiro:

you didn't try to check if changing option would fix that, didn't you?

Changing what option?

I've now confirmed that multiple people have the same bug. An in-game workaround is to adjust the volume in the game settings which will bring back sound until you open the Steam overlay again. The longer-term workaround is still to disable the Steam overlay. It's surprising there aren't more reports of this problem given how often people ask about it in-game.