The public beta launched for the "Steam Community". When you launch steam, click on settings and you should see an area where it says betas and you should be able to select the steam community to participate in. The official website is here, I'm probably going to test it out and see how it is.

 

edit: I created a group, it's here

Ok, I just joined.

So far, it seems like a really solid deal. For a beta, I haven't noticed anything that doesn't seem polished. The friends list is a bit... eh.. clunky with the avatars on, so I had to remove those, but all-in-all, very good lookin' deal. Promising, to be sure.

 

Only thing I'd add is steam game-based chatrooms. Example:

Counter-Strike: Source

+Room 1(15)

Counter-Strike

+Room 1(20)

Call of Duty

+Room 1(15)

 

Maybe add a pretty little UI to go along with the chatroom selection window. I'm not fond of how it brings up the large Steam Window to view things, so I'd just prefer a separate popup for that, if it was implemented.

 

EDIT: Pretty cool, there are group-based chats. In other words, there are chatrooms, but they're user-created. Example: Sharp created The Armory chatroom and anyone can join, and it's always up so you can join and chat with the Armory guys any time of the day. Freakin' sweet!

(But Valve still needs to make non-user-created chatrooms.)

You can also add non-steam games to your Steam games window now. I've added my battlefield games and it works fine, the Steam in-game chats also work in these too just like x-fire. So far it's looking pretty cool like biscuit mentioned. They need an auto-detect feature though so you don't need to manually add your non-steam games.

You can also add non-steam games to your Steam games window now. I've added my battlefield games and it works fine, the Steam in-game chats also work in these too just like x-fire. So far it's looking pretty cool like biscuit mentioned. They need an auto-detect feature though so you don't need to manually add your non-steam games.

How do you add non-steam games to the favorite games window?

Open up the main steam window, go up to the top where it says File, View and Games. Select games and then add non-steam game.

Open up the main steam window, go up to the top where it says File, View and Games. Select games and then add non-steam game.

Doh! Didn't see that. Thanks.

Just a note, if you have any custom skins revert back to the default steam skin. If you don't it will look terrible. I thought my install was botched for the last hour and then realized I had a custom armory skin

Just a note, if you have any custom skins revert back to the default steam skin. If you don't it will look terrible. I thought my install was botched for the last hour and then realized I had a custom armory skin

I use Flat - Obisidian (which I believe is an option Steam provides by default), and there are no errors with it. So it must be ONLY custom skins. Be sure to submit it, as we're pretty much beta testers!

Roger that, I will. I prefer his skin to the default one so I'll make sure they know.

who's lord fuzzywig? 0_o?

who's lord fuzzywig? 0_o?

Lord Fuzzywig is me, silly!

I'm going to go ahead and assume the group thing you made is for Armory members right? That's definitely nice to see they're finally fixing that part of steam, funny that the friends list is still glitchy, I always had problems with it not showing my friends when we were trying to link up.

cool,i'll have to check it out

I joined the community ;D.

 

I'll be either Nadril or Cyrant

I joined as well a couple days ago. Can non-members join? I noticed its an open group so right now anyone can join up.

Anyone can join.

Just posting here to sport my new sig...

Looks nice The reason why it's a public group is because I made it public during the beta just to make things easier. They never made a way to change groups from public/private.

I dig it, Gator. Very good work on the text. It matches perfectly. I give the text a 11 out of 10.

 

Also, yes, I think the Steam Community should remain public because it wouldn't exactly be a "community" if we removed that and made it invite only. Think of it like a... real-time forum! ;]

 

P.S. People need to get in the chat room more often! D: