Valve opened up the beta of their new Steam Community on Thursday in a a way only Valve could. They gave away beta codes in the form of Steam Gifts to the first 50,000 players to achieve the “Pillar of Community” badge during the recent Steam Summer Sale. They lead up to this with four days of announcements revolving around the new features of the Steam Community and the way players will be able to interact with them.
GAME HUBS
Game Hubs are a new feature for the Steam Community that bring together content from both developers and players. Each game’s hub will highlight blog posts, announcements, and news alongside popular community-created content like screenshots, videos and workshop items. Players can select an element that is then brought up for further interaction, such as commenting or voting. Each hub also includes a discussions tab with conversation in bulletin board format. The format of the hubs is unique but definitely takes cues from other popular social networks and content aggregate sites. Every game on Steam will have a hub.
GROUP REDUX
There are more than 2.5 million groups on Steam, from official game groups to player-made groups. As part of the new Steam Community, all groups will be getting a facelift. While this is mostly just a redesign, each group will gain a conversation tab similar to the Game Hubs, and will be able to set favorite games for members to check out. The groups end up with a cleaner look overall allowing for a lot of information to display on the main page. They also offer easy access to specific features when needed.
IC Wut Steam Did Thar
VALVE-BOOK / STEAM-IT / GABE-ER
Players content will display in exciting new—to Steam—ways. Steam users will be able to view a single player’s content on a wall-type page, or view all of their friends’ activity in a visually rich feed. Most listings, whether it be a new game acquired, content shared or status update, will have the ability to comment, save as a favorite or rate up or down. Yes, there is both a thumbs up and a thumbs down button. These ratings will be used to decide the content that ends up at the top of Game Hubs. Player can also post status updates to their feed to share whatever mood they may be in or random thought bouncing through their brain.
NICKNAMES
Have you ever had a friend that liked to constantly change their display name and avatar on Steam causing awkward moments where you wondering why there was some random dude on your friends list and how they knew your sister had her tongue pierced? Steam Friend Nicknames is the resolution to this problem. Players will now be able to set a nickname for each of their friends so that they will always have a reference to who they are other then the in-game name they decide to provide that day. This will be as easy as using the pull-down in the Friends list and selecting Set Nickname.
BETA ROLL OUT
Each of the lucky 50K players that received a Steam Community Beta invite also got one for a friend, making the initial beta limited to only one hundred thousand of Steam’s well over twenty million users. Valve will be rolling out the beta to more and more users as the days go by, so get involved with the community if you are interested in trying it out. Everyone can get a sneak peak of the new formats with the Game Hub for Team Fortress 2 and The New Steam Community Beta Steam Group.
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