The next 100,000 players who earned the Pillar of Steam Community Steam Badge have received 2 guest passes to the beta.

We've received some really great feedback so far that we hope to address very soon. Please continue to tell us what you think!

Innovative new technology deployed across Steam store

August 17, 2012--Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Ricochet) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced the launch of Volume Control, a major improvement to video playback in the Steam store.

After two years, and six teams of engineers, Valve has added the ability for gamers to control audio volume of videos within the Steam store. As of today, all video players within the Steam store now have an intuitively-designed slider to let customers adjust their preferred level of audio while watching trailers, teasers, and short films.

“This is literally the most significant development in video playback technology on Steam since we added [Adobe] Flash movies years ago,” said Julius Willmott at Valve. “We finally had to form a special task force to address this long-standing feature, as it clearly wasn’t going to build itself. We’ve play-tested the feature with multiple focus groups and think we’ve finally hit on a winning combination of usability and sleekness.”

In addition to the volume slider, Valve has added subtle yet important gradients to both the video loading bar and the video playback progress bar.

For details and to experience the best video player on the web, please visit http://www.steampowered.com

Another round of guest passes have been sent out to the next 40,000 players who earned the Pillar of Community Steam Badge. Each player received two guest passes, so they can use one and give one to a friend.

We really appreciate hearing all the feedback, so keep it coming!

Just wanted to say thank you to everyone for taking the time to post thoughtful and relevant feedback. It's been really helpful to hear what you like and don't like.

We're reading every post and collecting data, so keep it coming!

We just finished sending out invites to the New Steam Community Beta to the first 50,000 players who earned the Pillar of Community Steam badge.

You will need to go into your inventory, select the item "Beta access to the New Steam Community" and click the "Add to my game library" button. After that, you will have access to all the features in the New Steam Community Beta.