As promised, Valve has kicked off the beta program for their recently announced overhaul of the Steam service's community features, a raft of changes that center around new Game Hubs that intend to function as a one-stop shop for all news, discussion and user-created content for every game on Steam.

Players interested in checking out the new features can't just opt straight in however, to get in early, you'll need to earn the Pillar of the Steam Community badge, which involves performing an assortment of community-related tasks on steam.

As a bit of a taste, and celebrating Team Fortress 2's recent expansion into co-operative gameplay, Valve has launched the Team Fortress 2 game hub for everyone to browse.

Beta access will be available to the first 50,000 users to earn the badge, who will also receive one additional invite for a friend. Beta access is then expected to "increase incrementally until the public launch".

More specifics can be found over at steamcommunity.com.