The Steam group would let people chat in Steam without having to individually add people as friends, primarily (I assume) in order to organize multi-player matches. There is a 'discussion' feature, as well (which are essentially Steam's game specific forums).
The Vault was hooked up to a test database so Larian could test the updates. Now that they are switching over to the real kickstarter/paypal database, the link feature was removed until they are ready make it public (there will be a kickstarter update when it is available). It is Monday in Belgium now, as well, but only 2am.
