Vale announces that today's new Steam update adds Skype's SILK audio codec for voice communication, offering what they call a "significant" improvement in sound quality over Steam's previous voice technology, at the expense of a little bandwidth, as SILK's dynamic bitrate ranges from 8-30 kbps versus the fixed rate of 15 kbps for their old codec. Word is: "Steam chat with SILK is now also automatically available for all games that take advantage of the Steamworks Voice API. Valve's own Portal 2, set to release in mid-April, uses this newly updated system to enable voice chat in its cooperative gameplay mode."