If you think back to 2002, when Steam first launched, I specifically remember Computer Gaming World handing out the not-so-coveted award of ‘Coaster of the Year’ to Valve and their Steam delivery platform.

Needless to say, Valve have turned that around to the point where most gamers would much rather purchase games from Steam instead of the brick and mortar store down the street. And now they’re once again pushing forward the industry that we care so much about with Steamworks.

Steamworks was described to be “a suite of publishing and development tools (the same used in Valve’s Half-Life 2 and The Orange Box) that publishers and developers can attain, free of charge.”

And when they say suite, they mean it. Steamworks includes real-time sales tracking, an encryption system, auto-updating, territory control, voice chat, multiplayer matchmaking, social networking (including features such as Achievements) and development tools, including private betas and QA tools.

Jason Holtman, Valve business director, said “It just makes sense to put this stuff out there so developers don’t have to worry about the plumbing.” I’m not entirely sure what some of said ‘plumbing’ entails, but it’ll be made available free of charge and not just to clients of Steam, but to any developer regardless of whether or not they use Steam, Direct2Drive, or any other distribution system.

As far as the sale’s tracking goes, Holtman says you should “Forget NPD, forget ELPSA. You’ll know down to the finest details how many games have been sold every hour of the day, every day of the week. And that information is in real-time.”

I’m curious as to how many big-time developers will actually take to Steamworks

So, how do you one-up the value of the year (i.e. Orange Box)? When you’re Valve, you continue to innovate and evolve the industry that we love so much by introducing Steamworks.

Parties interested in Steamworks should contact Holtman at jasonh@valvesoftware.com or visit www.steamgames.com/steamworks.

Source: Next-Gen.biz

Tags: Half-Life-2:-Orange-Box, orange-box, steam, Valve

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