You can actually turn it off if you don't want it. Seems pretty selfish to suggest because actually some people do make use of it.

Originally posted by Luna:

The steam overlay is just an inconvenience, getting in my way when I press the wrong keys accidentally, and not once in my life have I even considered using it for anything, plus it breaks games with some mods. I don't see a reason why it is a feature.

As mention you can disable it. You can also rebind the key to open it too. I changed mine from Shift+Tab to the minus key on the numpad. I'm not very likely to hit it accidentally.

It's user manageable, you don't ave to use it, but millions of people do. So there you go. Don't hold your breath on it being removed.

Turn it off or change the keybinding.

I use Ctrl+F12.

As others have said, you can completely turn off the feature.

I'll also add that just because you don't personally see the need to use it doesn't mean that others don't like to use it to quickly access guides for the games they're playing, their friends list, or to check achievement progress.

To turn off the Steam overlay, open Steam, go to Settings, select the In-Game tab, and uncheck "Enable the Steam Overlay while in-game." Click OK to save the changes.

Here is a video tutorial explaining what you need to do:
https://youtu.be/LGPx3EpKfq0

Why is this ♥♥♥♥ enabled by default?

Originally posted by Luna:

The steam overlay is just an inconvenience, getting in my way when I press the wrong keys accidentally, and not once in my life have I even considered using it for anything, plus it breaks games with some mods. I don't see a reason why it is a feature.

I like having the FPS counter and the clock on screen, and the notes are nice to have too for puzzles.

I also rebound it to the * numpad key, so no accidental presses here

If it causes issues or doesn't work for some games, then it's easy to disable: just go into a game's settings page from the Library and the toggle is right there.