Valve Releases Steamworks, A Publishing Tool

[Craig]

Valve just released something that is going to be hated by pirates, but loved by PC game developers. It's called Steamworks, and it is a suite of software that allows PC publishers to take advantage of many of the perks that Valve themselves enjoy with the Steam platform.

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What does it mean? It gives publishers and developers the ability to control their games in a brand new way, with Steam itself dropping in the final executable to get the game working, which could have a hefty impact on how we buy our games. And most importantly, no one’s paying Valve a penny, neither the publisher, nor the player.

The suite will allow developers to perform many of the tricks that have distinguished Valve, such as monitoring sales stats, hefty anti-piracy measures, automatic updating, voice chat, multiplayer matchmaking, social networking and even the ability to run beta testing. The possibilities this opens up for independent developers, and smaller publishing companies, could be enormous.

It’s a bit confusing what this will actually means, so here’s what we understand: A publisher can sell their game in the shops or distribute it digitally via their own system, customers install it, and then have Steam drop in the executable. It kills off day-one piracy in a single shot. Bam. Then updates will be delivered automatically for the game via Steam, and all the post-release stats and tools will be available, with Valve charging no one any money for this at all.

Valve is positioned to become the defacto standard for PC game publishing. They are already ridiculously stocked if you check the games they have for sale right now, and it only appears as if more and more titles are going to be headed to this way of distribution to help combat piracy.

I, for one, dig it.

[CoffeeShark]

sounds great - I guess those that measure PC games sales will have to factor in digital downloads, after all...

[DominiKing]

That's great news. I have Steam and I like it, a lot of people told me not to get it and that it sucked but I've had not problem with it. And it is true, over the short amount of time that I've had it they've release a bunch of new games. It's worth it having Steam, unless you don't have internet (but who doesn't?).

[Fischig]

I don't have an internet connection. Btw, this is great!

Like Domini said, a few people I know have had problems with steam, I however, have yet to have any problems

[FuzzyLogik]

sounds pretty cool! I still like having physical copies though.. but most everything HL related that's come out after HL2's initial release i've got through steam.

[SonicSpeed]

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Originally Posted by FuzzyLogik

sounds pretty cool! I still like having physical copies though.. but most everything HL related that's come out after HL2's initial release i've got through steam.

The past few games that I have purchased, I bought them at a store, but then activated them on steam. Buying the DVD's saves 4-10GB's of download time.

If EA were bright enough to give up EA Link and join with Valve in releasing their games on Steam... it would make buying games a whole lot easier

[Dukefrukem]

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Originally Posted by Craig

Valve is positioned to become the defacto standard for PC game publishing. They are already ridiculously stocked if you check the games they have for sale right now, and it only appears as if more and more titles are going to be headed to this way of distribution to help combat piracy.

I, for one, dig it.

I am 110% behind steam/valve. I love the fact that I can download any game I own from anywhere. It all depends on your connection speed.