Steampowered.com, the home of Valve's popular downloadable gaming portal, has been updated today with a message alluding to a summer update deemed as "the largest... to the Steam platform since the launch," which occurred over three years ago you might be interested to know.

The full update reads:

"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."

Seems like a great big concoction of social networking and gaming to us. Now, where does that already exist? Oh, yeah, Microsoft's Xbox Live service. Still, we're keen to see how robust the venture turns out to be and how willing Steam's 13 million users are to embrace it.

(Valve does use the word "free" however, Macca, not something attributed to Xbox Live - Ed)