Valve unites Epic Games, id Software and themselves under the same roof

[shadow2get]

Source

Bellevue (WA) - Steam content distribution platform just became THE 800-pound gorilla in the world of digital distribution. Valve just announced that Epic Games signed with Steam, making this three out of three for founders of FPS gaming.

Steam is now expanded with a complete Unreal line-up, starting with Unreal Gold and Unreal II: The Awakening for single-player titles, and Unreal Tournament, UT2004 and latest baby, Unreal Tournament III. The oddball title that is not present in the line-up is of course, Unreal Tournament 2003. If you decide to buy the complete pack, that'll settle you back for $53.95 - four dollars less than a stand-alone version of UT3 in retail stores. That offer will expire next week, after which the pack will cost $59.95.

With titles from Epic, id and Valve on offer, you do not need to see that future of PC gaming is closely tied with the success of Steam, which proved to be quite a brilliant solution for digital distribution, keeping piracy at bay with its content protection, but offering legal backup utility at the same time.

You can check this offer over at www.steampowered.com. But seeing Gabe Newell, Tim Sweeney and John Carmack under one roof... who could have thought that would ever happen?

[alsiladka]

Cool. Used steam for the first time when steam was offering free games for nvidia users.
Was impresses by the concept, this is going to be the itunes of games. A robust and simple distribution system, now with amazing titles, always updated games, and backup restore of downloaded games makes formatting the hard disk less painfull!

[gxsaurav]

Umm...how does steam works???

Is it like, I make an account in steam & associate it with my debit card. Then there is a big library of games available on Steam like Half life or now UT 3, then I select a game such as UT 3 & Pay $ 10 (example) to buy it & steam downloads the whole 6 GB if data to my computer & installs it on E:\Games\ (where I install games). After this I can simply burn the data to a DVD for backup purpose....

is it like this?

[Ecko]

Hoping of some god action
Not to tell CS Online is coming 2

[entrana]

Originally Posted by gx_saurav

Umm...how does steam works???

Is it like, I make an account in steam & associate it with my debit card. Then there is a big library of games available on Steam like Half life or now UT 3, then I select a game such as UT 3 & Pay $ 10 (example) to buy it & steam downloads the whole 6 GB if data to my computer & installs it on E:\Games\ (where I install games). After this I can simply burn the data to a DVD for backup purpose....

is it like this?

not exactly. steam downloads files caled .gcf files. it downloads this from the net and stores it in the steam steamapps folder. then depending on your account it installs the game only for a certain account. so then u can play with your account only. you can back the game up. steam will create a backup file whih u can burn to a dvd or 2 dvds however u wish , but u can only use the file with steam. its kind of a bother