Since it was delayed from the intended date last week (possibly due to QuakeCon), it was a surprise to see that Valve has forged ahead with the beta launch of Steam Community, described by Valve as the largest addition to Steam since its official launch in 2003.

Steam Community introduces some major new features to the Friends network, such as personal pages for each user and groups for gamers to join to organize games. The advanced features promised, such as player matching, do not appear to be present yet. The service is comparable to Xbox Live, but does not require a subscription fee.