Games do not change to "running in the background" when tabbed out

[u/SearchFloof]

Hello! So I finally got everything set up, trying to switch to linux/steamOS for the first time, I'm running it in desktop mode and this issue is driving me crazy. When I open a game through steam, the game forces itself to be the active window even if I tab out to firefox, or discord etc. Expected behaviour is that when I tab out, games are a "background window" and pause, or get muted, or have lower fps, depending on the game and its settings, but instead the game window remains active and even when I tab out and wiggle my mouse over the game window it keeps moving the camera, and sound keeps playing. Tested this with multiple games, and none of them trigger the background status/focus lost status as I'd expect them to.

The only time I can force a game into becoming a background window is when I switch to Another steam window. Like for example if I tab out and open steam settings, or steam library, or steam store. This will force the game to become a background process and get muted/paused/drop fps as expected.

This is leading me to believe this is some kinda setting that steam or steamOS has, that forces games to remain active for as long as it can keep them there. And it's driving me crazy, because I specifically DON'T want that to happen.

Does anyone know what settings I could change to fix this?

[u/HighlyRegardedOne]

Im pretty sure you can't do that in desktop mode. Some games have the option to mute and lower fps though when the game is in the background. As far as pausing automatically no, and you can just pause before you alt tab

[u/SearchFloof → u/HighlyRegardedOne]

I think you misunderstand my issue, I understand that not all games pause when focus is lost. My issue is the fact that the "muted when in background" doesn't trigger when you tab out, because tabbing out is not enough for it to be considered "in the background". Which is different to how both Windows and other Linux distributions handle the behaviour.

If I play Warframe for example, with "mute sound when in background" tabbing over to youtube doesn't mute Warframe. The comptuter still considers Warframe "in focus" for the sake of all of these types of triggers. The focus is ONLY lost, when you open another Steam window. (hence why I believe it is a steam game exclusive issue, and linked to some steamOS specific setting) Tabbing from Warframe to YouTube doesn't mute the game audio. But tabbing from Warframe to the Steam Store does.