steam posts

Valve's Steam service lets its users voluntarily upload their PC system specs up to be compared and contrasted and every month Valve offers up updated surveys of what their users have inside their PCs. Their January 2010 survey results are in and the results show that Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system has now overtaken Windows Vista in gamers' PCs.

Combining both 32-bit and 64-bit versions, Windows 7 now has a 28.53 percent slice of the OS pie in the survey while Windows Vista's slice has 27.91 percent of Steam users. Now the Windows 7 numbers may be somewhat inflated due to the fact that some of Steam's users may still be using the free release candidate version of the OS that was released in 2009. That version will begin to become unusable in March and will shut down completely in June. It's also worth noting that the 32 bit version of Windows XP blows both Windows 7 and Vista away with 41.15 percent of Steam users still using the now 10 year old OS in their PCs.

Pre-orders for the PC version of Battlefield Bad Company 2 continue to do well on Steam. The latest weekly top 10 sales list for the download service shows the upcoming first person shooter at the number one position. However, the indie FPS MMO Global Agenda from Hi-Rez Studios came in at number two for the past week. The game officially launched on February 1. Steam is currently the only place to download the game (Hi-Rez is also selling a box copy via Amazon.com).

BioShock 2, due for release next week, comes in at number three on the list with Mass Effect 2 and Modern Warfare 2 at number four and five, respectively: The full list is as follows:

1. Battlefield Bad Company 2 - Digital Illusions/EA
2. Global Agenda - Hi-Rez Studios
3. BioShock 2 - 2K Marin/2K Games
4. Mass Effect 2 - BioWare/EA
5. Modern Warfare 2 - Infinity Ward/Activision
6. Aliens Vs Predator - Rebellion/Sega
7. Mass Effect 2 Digital Deluxe Edition - BioWare/EA
8. Titan Quest Gold - THQ
9. Left 4 Dead 2 - Valve
10. Star Trek Online Digital Deluxe Edition - Cryptic Studios/Atari

Even though the newly released Aliens Vs Predator demo on Steam just supports DirectX 9 it looks like the demo for Rebellion's upcoming first person shooter is highly popular. So popular, in fact, that many players had to wait a while to sign into multiplayer games. A few players could not join at all.

Rebellion's official web site has posted up a statement on their site apologizing for the matchmaking issues. They state, "We're pleased to say later in the day the issue was corrected and a small patch to the PC executable next time you launch it from Steam will have you finding and playing games using Quick Match as it was intended." The full game, which will have support for dedicated servers, is due out on February 16.

Who loves to save money? We do, of course. And the weekend PC game sales that have been posted today could save you enough money to get a few more chips and beer for the big game on Sunday.

• Steam has put both Far Cry games on sale with the original first person shooter priced at $4.99 and Far Cry 2 at $9.99 until Monday. It's also offering a free version of Red Faction Guerrilla with the purchase of Metro 2033.
• GamersGate has added all of Telltale Games' titles to its service and all of Telltale's games are priced at 10 percent off. Other games on sale this weekend include Space Siege at 75 percent off and the original BioShock at 50 percent off until Sunday.
• Impulse also has several games on sale this weekend including the Red Faction collection with all three games in the first person shooter series for $22.50

Just a reminder for all of the folks who might want to use Steam later this evening. Valve has announced that the PC game download service will have several of its features shut down beginning at 6 pm Pacific Ttme (9 pm Eastern time) for Valve to go in and do some server maintenance. The downtime should last until 9 pm Pacific time (Midnight Eastern time).

You won't be able to download or purchase games via Steam during the down time period. There will also be no access to the Steam community features and games that use the Steamworks matchmaking features won't be playable.

While developer The Creative Assembly is close to releasing Napoleon: Total War they haven't forgotten their previous historical RTS game Empire: Total War. This week the Steam download service revealed the developer's plans for an all new mini-expansion to the game, Elite Units of the East.

Due for release via Steam on February 8, the DLC will add a total of 12 new units to the game's Maratha and Ottoman factions for both single and multiplayer action. You will be getting everything from the Haydut Irregulars to the Rajput Zamindars. The regular price for the mini-expansion will be $3.25 but Steam has the item on sale from now until its release for just $2.92.

Valve can still give its players some small little surprises, even in an update for Team Fortress 2 that technically doesn't add any new content to the multiplayer shooter. The latest update, delivered automatically via Steam, adds a new gameplay mode called Highlander. It's a 9v9 team play mode where each team has to pick one of the nine classes to play as, hence "Highlander" in that "In the end there can be only one."

The update also has some bug fixes and some changes and improvements to two of the game's maps. Oh and while you are downloading the update, you can also go to the game's official web page and check out the terrific work done in the recent Propaganda poster contest.

The rumors hit the interwebs earlier this week but today publisher Sega made it official. They plan to release a multiplayer demo for Aliens Vs Predator for the PC and other platforms sometime on Thursday. The demo will be available for download via Valve's Steam service.

The demo trom developer Rebellion akes place on one map and has just one of the game's many multiplayer modes (Deathmatch) but it will allow players to control all three of the game's playable species (Alien, Predator and Colonial Marine human). There's no word yet if the demo will support the DirectX 11 graphics that the full game is supposed to have. The full version of Aliens Vs Predator is due for release on February 16.

Last week Valve stated that their Steam PC game download service had over 25 million active users in 2009. That's a lot of folks and all of them are going to be inconvenienced on Thursday. Valve has announced that some planned maintenance work will take a number of Steam services down for a few hours that day.

While games that don't rely on Steam matchmaking will still be playable those that do will be unavailable starting at 9 pm Eastern time on Thursday. The down time should only last until Midnight Eastern time. During that time people will also not be able to purchase and/or download games on Steam. The Steam Community features will also not work during the maintenance period.

Tuesday is usually a day that most people dread. It's a day that smack dab in the middle of the week and the weekend looks like its months away. But thankfully there are some mid-week PC game sales to keep the work blues away.

Steam's regular mid-week sale this week is for Titan Quest Gold. From now until Thursday you can purchase and download the action-RPG game and its expansion pack from now defunct developer Iron Lore together for the super low price of just $4.99. Direct2Drive has also put the acclaimed indie game Cogs on sale for a limited time for just $4.95.