http://kotaku.com/gaming/mysteam/steam-community-beta-due-in-july-281618.php

 "Valve's plans for the Steam Community look to be gelling quite nicely as the company has announced that the new service which will allow PC gamers to "connect with friends and other gamers, create and join groups, and organize matches" will go beta this month. The service, which was announced in June, is free and works across all Steam-powered games."

Below is from http://kotaku.com/gaming/thanks-4-the-add/steam-community-features-detailed-270618.php 

"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."

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" I really don't want to be the guy in charge of Games for Windows LIVE." as somebody else put it. 

gogo team fortress.

Yeah...it's already a great service, more features will hopefully only improve it.

Windows Live does have cross-360 gaming though, which won't be on Steam ever I'm sure. But that's not a big deal to me.

Finally, no more alt-tabbing between cs and irc just to set up a scrim! Steam is starting to take over. It's really been growing since it was introduced. I know a lot of people dislike it, but I think it's great.

thetonestarr: Don't forget left 4 dead!

Left 4 DEAD!!!

Man...that thing needs a release date...and it better be tomorrow.

isn't Games for Windows Live also free?

Steam > Live on PC for sure.

Why pay to play games online on a PC? In fact why pay to play them on a console I ask MS...

 Yeah. There's a specific problem on the PC, though.

In the console world, Microsoft was the definitely the first of the three major players to establish a strong online presence. Xbox live is still considered to be the best online service of the bunch -- both in number of players and in quality (yes, the PSN seems to be catching up, and I'm personally very excited about Home, but that's another discussion). Microsoft was there first, so they theoretically can claim they established the correct price point.

But on the PC? Steam was there first. Steam has many more users. And Steam... is free. It's very difficult to enter a market where the dominator already exists and is already free. Really an akward situation, I think. 

I am amazed so many people support MS for having a pay service on the console. Undoubtedly they have the best online, but neither Sony nor Nintendo charges, yet, for online. They did carve out the online niche first, so I guess they set the trend.

Windows Live has Silver and Gold versions that pretty much restrict you on the things you could be doing for free unless you pay for the Gold subscription. They're even trying to package achievements with the Gold subscription as a plus, which I see no point.

You never know, Valve could try and set up cross platform play with the 360 and/or PS3. I don't think it's totally out of the question.