January 29, 2008 - Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Half-Life and Counter-Strike) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announce Steamworks, a complete suite of publishing and development tools - ranging from copy protection to social networking services to server browsing - is now available free of charge to developers and publishers worldwide.Steamworks, the same suite of tools used in best-selling PC titles Half-Life 2 and The Orange Box, is available for all PC games distributed via retail and leading online platforms such as Steam. The services included in Steamworks may be used a la carte or in any combination.
Specifically, Steamworks offers:
• Real-time stats on sales, gameplay, and product activation: Know exactly how well your title is selling before the charts are released. Find out how much of your game is being played. Login into your Steamworks account pages and view up to the hour information regarding worldwide product activations and player data.
• State of the art encryption system: Stop paying to have your game pirated before it's released. Steamworks takes anti-piracy to a new level with strong encryption that keeps your game locked until the moment it is released.
• Territory/version control: The key-based authentication provided in Steamworks also provides territory/version controls to help curb gray market importing and deliver territory-specific content to any given country or region.
• Auto updating: Insures all customers are playing the latest and greatest version of your games.
• Voice chat: Available for use both in and out of game.
• Multiplayer matchmaking: Steamworks offers you all the multiplayer backend and matchmaking services that have been created to support Counter-Strike and Team Fortress 2, the most played action games in the world.
• Social networking services: With support for achievements, leaderboards, and avatars, Steamworks allows you to give your gamers as many rewards as you would like, plus support for tracking the world's best professional and amateur players of your game.
• Development tools: Steamworks allows you to administer private betas which can be updated multiple times each day. Also includes data collection tools for QA, play testing, and usability studies.
"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."
"As more developers and publishers have embraced Steam as a leading digital distribution channel, we've heard a growing number of inquiries regarding the availability of the platform's services and tools," said Jason Holtman, director business development at Valve. "Offering Steamworks is part of our ongoing efforts to support the needs of game developers and our publishing partners."
Steam is a leading platform for the delivery and management of PC games and digital content. With over 13 million active accounts and more than 250 games, plus hundreds of movie files and game demos available, Steam has become a frequent destination for millions of gamers around the world.
For more information regarding Steamworks, please visit www.steamgames.com/steamworks. To find out about more about Steamworks contact jasonh@valvesoftware.com
The fact that I think Valve Software is a good company...So please, Riley (Mr >U) spare me your ad hominem attacks about my mouth, and Valve's figurative "cock."Your loyalty and admiration of Valve is misguided, but you needn't worry about my reply in that regard. I save such gems only for the repeat offenders like Dagok who deserve it for their repeated failed attempts to insult me.
Your mistrust is misplaced I think, because you make the very unlikely argument that "You shouldn't buy this game, because Valve Software could close down and you could lose your game!"Actually that is not my main argument because it is not the most common case where Steam customers lose permanent access to the games they purchased. While Valve could certainly undergo a corporate merger or stop offering some or all games on Steam for other reasons, it is far more likely that a Steam user will permanently lose access to his Steam games because Valve unilaterally decided to terminate his account. Valve has a self-described "zero tolerance" policy regarding the termination of a customer's steam account, and it won't even contact the customer to inform him that it has been terminated nor is there any form of redress or compensation for such termination. Even if the customer spent hundreds or thousands of dollars on games, he still loses it all, and some of the reasons for account termination are quite arbitrary and seemingly innocuous. See http://support.steampowered.com/cgi-bin/steampowered.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=368 and http://www.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=online_conduct for some of the details. So, just because all Steam users don't lose access to their games, doesn't mean that YOU won't.
specifically the point that you really DO HAVE A CHOICE.No consumers really don't have a choice beyond simply not patronizing Steam and buying other games. However when every commercial game uses Steam or something similar, consumers will literally have no choice because all games will be similarly restricted. That also does nothing to compensate those who have already lost their purchases on Steam because they can't simply "not buy" what they already bought since Valve doesn't give refunds on released games.
just because you want to play a game, doesn't mean Valve Software has to give wrap their contract around what you desire so that you can feel secure.As I wrote plainly below, this is about game companies showing fairness towards, respect for, and (dare I say) trust of the customer. If enough consumers wake up and demand more, they'll get it. Game companies stopped using Starforce because enough consumers refused to continue to tolerate it. The music publishers are now abandoning DRM because enough consumers complained and refused to continue to buy it. If enough PC game consumers grow a spine and refuse to tolerate Steam's restrictive DRM and terms of service, Valve too will have to relent. But so long as customers like you think you don't deserve better, not only will you not get better, you'll get even worse DRM and more restrictions piled on your games.
While, this doesn't PROVE that Valve will be around in another 10 years, what it does do is demonstrate that...Valve Software has offered good service to CS 1 players for the past X amount of years, thus it is not unreasonable to expect another X amount of years of good service.No, what it demonstrates is that Valve will exploit its most loyal customers regardless of how old the game is. First Valve shoved Steam down its users throats even when the majority of them didn't want it (and wouldn't migrate to it when it was optional) by bundling Steam in updates to its previously released games like Counterstrike and requiring Steam to continue to play those games online. Then Valve shoved in-game advertising and tracking down those same Counterstrike users throats by using Steam to force those ad-embedded updates upon them if they wanted to continue to play the game. In contrast Quake I, II, and III owners can still play those similarly old games online, and neither id nor Activision has forced them to run bloated and restrictive game distribution software like Steam or to endure in-game advertising and tracking to be able to continue to play those games as Valve has done with its older titles.
Especially since they seem to only be getting better, and better.No, Valve is getting worse and worse. Soon all of Valve's games will probably have embedded advertising and tracking in them like Counterstrike does now or even worse. If Steamworks turns out to be free and popular, Steam may become a cesspool of advertising, marketing, and user tracking to pay for it.