What’s Steam been doing in the nine months since Valve last released detailed statistics? Adding another five million users and more than 200 new games, for starters.
Shortly after Microsoft revealed new features for their Games for Windows Live service, Valve counters with new Steamworks features, including in-game downloadable content, robust matchmaking, and new technology they claim “makes DRM obsolete.”
Valve have today announced Steamcloud, a new element to their Steam service that will allow the company to store your user data online. What kind of data? Stuff like saved games. Keyboard configurations. Preferences. That kind of thing. So if you’re playing on one PC and move to another (say, you’re playing in a cafe, or buy a new PC), you can keep all that stuff. Pretty neat. Also announced were some extra services Valve have in store later down the line, like driver auto-updating, and a means for Steam to check your PC, check that game you want to buy then give you a fairly conclusive answer on whether you’ll be able to play it or not. Bless you, Valve. Bless you.
Steamworks & Steamcloud – In Summary [Rock, Paper, Shotgun][Pic]
It looks like Valve just fired a shot in war to become the dominant support for online PC gaming. They are now giving away Steamworks, a suite of publishing and development tools that include copy protection, social networking services and server browsing, to developers and publisher worldwide.
Steamworks is the online back-end used in both Half-Life 2 and The Orange Box.
“Developers and publishers are spending more and more time and money cobbling together all the tools and backend systems needed to build and launch a successful title in today’s market,” said Gabe Newell, president of Valve. “Steamworks puts all those tools and systems together in one free package, liberating publishers and developers to concentrate on the game instead of the plumbing.”
