Major Steam Update Coming

[MC]

This summer Valve will ship a major update to its online gaming platform Steam, introducing an advanced set of community features to more than 13 million gamers around the world.

Beginning in July, Steam users can set up their own personal Steam pages and profiles, create and join groups, schedule games with friends, review who they've played with, see how well everyone played, chat with groups, chat via voice, and more. These new community services and features can be used with all Steam games, which include new releases and classic titles from leading publishers and independent developers.

Free of charge, the new community features will be accessible via the Steam desktop client and via the web.

"Our community has given us great direction on the ways they want to see Steam evolve," said Gabe Newell, co-founder and president of Valve. "Adding these new community features to make it easier to connect with other gamers is something we've wanted to see on Steam for a long time and this latest update is just the start. 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."

This upgrade marks the largest extension to the Steam platform since its first commercial release in March 2004. In its three year history, Steam has defined the next generation online gaming platform delivering hundreds of games to millions of users with services such as Guest Passes, Automatic Updates, Free Weekends, and allowing gamers to access their games from any PC.

For more information, please visit www.steampowered.com.

Source: http://www.planethalflife.com

 

[Skyrider]

Sounds nice actually, even though I didn't liked what Gaben said:

"Our community has given us great direction on the ways they want to see Steam evolve,"

*cough*CS ingame Ads*.. Lots of complains*cough* Even though it has nothing to do with Steam..

 

[Kaination]

Xbox live anyone?

Good update though.

 

[Arthos]

In before the rush of Steam Haters.



Sadly, Despite it's problems, Steam Works. And Valve will continue to work on it as long as it works... no matter how Marginally it actually does.

 

[Sicron]

Great that they added those features...I guess...
I will probably never use them, but for those who do use it, have fun...

 

[Desmond Tiny]

In before the rush of Steam Haters.



Sadly, Despite it's problems, Steam Works. And Valve will continue to work on it as long as it works... no matter how Marginally it actually does.

Very true, however this just seems to try and do what other's can do better.

"personal Steam pages and profiles, create and join groups" = Myspace

"review who they've played with, see how well everyone played, chat with groups, chat via voice, and more" Xbox live/profiles

so all thats being added is already done before and steam is just going to try and fit in. I don't mind steam but that's only because I only play ESF and they don't seem to update that anymore so I don't have any problems but I know I would if I played other games that are more recent

 

[Barney's_Soul]

Sounds nice actually, even though I didn't liked what Gaben said:

*cough*CS ingame Ads*.. Lots of complains*cough* Even though it has nothing to do with Steam..

Hey, don't disrespect the ads! They are like a texture pack for CS 1.6, just look at those high-rez ads compared to the envierment around them!

 

[Spunky]

They're bringing good stuff to PC gamers. Screw XBOX Live imo. Actually, screw all consoles imo. For those who say that this would be a ripoff of XBOX Live, you can die. It's not like there's anything like this for the PC right now, so go Valve!

 

[Sicron]

Yeah well, something I do hate about steam is updating without asking me. Half Life 2 started updating last time, and installed 5gb of files from foreign countries. I suddenly had halflife2_french, halflife2_spanish, halflife2_deutsch etc. I wasn't too happy about that since I only use english.

 

[frsrblch]

Steam is great, but I probably won't use any of the new features. It'll probably be a sizable download too.

Actually, screw all consoles imo.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to second that.

 

[Spunky]

Yeah well, something I do hate about steam is updating without asking me. Half Life 2 started updating last time, and installed 5gb of files from foreign countries. I suddenly had halflife2_french, halflife2_spanish, halflife2_deutsch etc. I wasn't too happy about that since I only use english.

There are options to disable that, but I'll bet you didn't bother looking.