Steam Community Launching This Month

July 20, 2007 8:40 PM

Valve has confirmed that the Steam Community, the studio's social networking and online multiplayer extensions for its popular game download service, will launch in beta form "at the end of the month," meaning gamers will have to wait no more than a week and a half to get their hands on the new features. The news was released via a Steam marketing message distributed through the software today.

First announced last month, the Steam Community promises features such as voice chat support, user profiles and groups, organized matches, and opponent tracking. "This latest update is just the start," said Valve founder Gabe Newell when Community was announced. "We've got a long list of items that we're working on to make it easier for gamers to connect and play games on Steam."

With Microsoft currently promoting its Games for Windows Live online service and marketing the service to PC game developers, it is likely that the Steam Community will find itself competing with the Microsoft-run initiative.

In other news, indie dev Chrono Logic's gooey physics-infused platformer Gish, winner of the 2005 Independent Games Festival, was today released via Steam for an initial price of $7.95.

Chris Remo

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[deleted] 1663222480

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July 20, 2007 8:47 PM

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- ShekkyBoy
  
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  July 21, 2007 4:34 AM
  
  Well, it's a beta. It's not going to be perfect first time round. And this is Valve we're talking about; remember when they just took Friends network offline for a year?