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Steam Community "this month"

Valve on course with beta version.

Valve has announced that it is on course to launch the beta version of the Steam Community at the end of this month - which sounds a lot like "this weekend".

It's a free service that lets you create your own profile pages, create and join groups, schedule games with friends, chat, and generally spy on people. It sounds a lot like the excellent Eurogamers community, you know, which is excellent and really rather good.

"We're adding the final polish now and are right on target to launch the beta version at the end of the month," announced last weekend's Steam bulletin.

It follows a throng of activity on the digital distribution service that first appeared back in 2002, where big-name publishers Eidos and recently THQ have made their games available.

Apparently that big-old thing the Internet is getting quite popular.