Steam launches 'Game Guides' beta

It's been a big week for new features entering beta on Steam. Just after the test launch of its Community Market feature, Valve has announced the beta release of "Game Guides." This set of tools and information sorting lets knowledgeable players create walkthroughs that are presented right alongside the games in Steam's community.

The announcement details how to make a guide. Once you've joined the Steam Community Beta Group to get access, you can go to a game's Hub page and click on the Guides tab. That will let you insert images from your Steam Cloud, add YouTube videos, or give your friends access to help you write it. Once you publish it, the community can start reading it. Simple as that.

Valve published a simple Portal 2 guide as an example, and the community has already produced a few more. Guides can be rated for quality or reported, but at the moment the company hasn't announced any personal benefit for writing a popular guide. In the beta phase, at least, you should just do it out of the goodness of your heart. Also bragging rights.