Friday, March 10 2006

Next week Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 will be released and playable on Steam. If you haven't preloaded this game ahead of the launch, you may do that here. There is also a trailer for the game that you may download to get a feel for what kind of game it is.

The Friends system is also nearing the end of its beta phase, and will soon be available to everyone running Steam. Friends allows you to see when your friends are playing games, and lets users chat with each other both inside and outside of many Steam games. There are also a number of additional features we'll be adding to it over time. Early next week, we'll be updating Steam with a convenient way to join the Friends beta.

We're also planning on going back to some of the older Counter-Strike: Source maps and giving them an HDR pass. Soon you'll get to play maps like de_dust with full High Dynamic Range lighting.