Valve's plans for the Steam platform are expanding far beyond selling, as the company confirmed plans today to add deep community and communication features to the digital distribution network. Starting next month, 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." Valve promises that these new features will available will all current and future Steam games.

While these features are free, and using them is totally optional, I'm sure some will decry the additions to Steam as furthering feature bloat and moving outside the bounds of the original intentions of the service.

I, on the other hand, welcome our new Valve overlords and cannot wait to schedule my fool head off. Michael McWhertor

VALVE® ANNOUNCES MAJOR UPDATE FOR STEAM®

Free Update Offers New Community Features for Connecting Gamers

June 20, 2007 — 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

About Valve
Valve is an entertainment software and technology company founded in 1996 and based in Bellevue, Washington. The company's portfolio of entertainment properties includes Half-Life®, Counter-Strike®, Day of Defeat®, Team Fortress® and PortalTM. Valve's catalog of products accounts for over 20 million retail units sold worldwide, and over 80% of PC online action gameplay. In addition, Valve is a developer of leading-edge technologies, such as the Source® game engine and Steam®, a broadband platform for the delivery and management of digital content. For more information, please visit www.valvesoftware.com