steamworks-sdk posts

Steam is without a doubt the most popular of all the PC game download services and part of the reason is that folks can download the client software and use it on any PC. But what if for security purposes you wanted to just have your Steam account work on just one PC? That's where the newly announced Steam Guard feature comes in.

Valve has just announced the new feature for Steam and the Steamworks tools that will let Steam users only allow one PC to have access to his or her Steam account and all the games on that account. Steam Guard will also allow users to see if any third parties try to log in or change settings in their Steam annount from outside PCs.

Steam Guard will also work with a new feature in Intel's second generation Core PC processors, the Identity Protection Technology. It's a hardware-based feature that generates a new password every 30 seconds. Valve's Gabe Newell is quoted in the press release as saying, "Account phishing and hijacking are our (number one) support issues. With Intel's IPT and Steam Guard, we've taken a big step towards giving customers the account security they need as they purchase more and more digital goods." There's no word on exactly when Steam Guard will be made available for Steam owners.

[Via email press release]

Earlier this year we were the first to report that Direct2Drive had decided to start offering PC game download that required that Valve's Steam client be installed after previously banning games that required such a feature. At the time Direct2Drive's head told Big Download that it gave in to customer demands for such games to be offered on the service. Now another PC game download outlet, GamersGate, has also started to offer PC game download that require the third party Steam client and registration.

The games, added earlier this month, include R.U.S.E. and Lead and Gold Gangs of the Wild West. Both listings state, Note: This product requires a 3rd party download and account." Back in July, GamersGate CEO Theodore Bergquist sent us a statement, "At this time, we have no plans to offer games that use Steamworks." He added, "We listen to our customer base very closely and they clearly prefer to not use a client."

So why the about face? Big Download contacted GamersGate and got a new statement from Bergquist. He states, "The original plan was to not offer anything that requires a third party download, but we had a few users request those titles. We want to provide the best service possible and we listen to our customers regularly. If a gamer would rather spend his/her hard-earned money with us and then go and play the game with someone else's software, that's alright with us. It's also good to see that Steam finally has to give-in a bit. In these retail versions, many of the more intrusive features have been turned off and are not shown to the customers. They require only a registration like any other multi-player service. We're trying this on just a few games and hopefully our customers will accept this. If not, we will know quite fast."

It's currently unknown exactly what Steam and Steamworks features are "turned off" for the GamersGate versions of the games and we will follow up with GamersGates to get more info.

Valve's launch of its Steam PC game download service for the Mac last May has been pretty successful, as least according to the company. A new Gamesindustry.biz article (free registration required) quotes Valve's business development director Jason Holtman as saying "we're seeing between a 15 and 20 percent increase in games that have a Mac version on Steam" in terms of sales figures. Specific sales figures were not revealed, as per Valve's history of keeping those number a secret.

In order to make more PC games available to Mac gamers, Holtman said they plan to "release some of our graphics code for the GL layer" for any game developer that will both be porting games to the Mac and will also use Valve's Steamworks tools. He states, "So our Steamworks partners will have access to some of the hard work that we do to get our games up on Mac, and they'll be able to incorporate that into their games - and our hope is it gets them there faster."

Several months ago Big Download broke the news that the PS3 downloadable game Burn Zombie Burn from developer Doublesix would be released for the PC at some point. Well, "at some point" has now turned into "August 4" because that's the release date that's showing up on the Steam web site for the game.

Like the PS3 version that was released via download in 2009, this title is a top-down action game where you have to deal with hordes of different kinds of zombies; exploding zombies, infectious zombies and "fire-farting super zombies". You get the idea. You have tons of guns and other weapons to defend yourself in six levels and three gameplay modes. The PC version is also hooked up with Steamworks for features like achievements, auto-updates, leaderboards and more. Pricing for Burn Zombie Burn has yet to be revealed.

If you are wondering why we didn't report on Valve's "surprise" for Portal 2 this past E3 2010 week, it's because the surprise didn't have anything to do with the PC version. Instead Valve revealed that the puzzle-shooter sequel would be released for the PS3 and that it would be the first console game to support Valve's Steamworks tools.

Portal 2 is also scheduled to have a two player co-op campaign that will be separate from the regular single player campaign. What's interesting about this is that, according to an article on The Kartel web site, Valve is aiming to allow PS3 and PC gamers to play the co-op mode together online thanks to the Steamworks support. We should find out for sure if this is possible when the game is released in 2011.

[Via VG247.com]

While GDC 2010 is over with, some things that were introduced in the conference are coming to light. One of them is a new online PDF brocheru for Valve's Steamworks game development tools that reveals a couple of new features that were not previously announced. One big one is new support for in-game microtransactions. Steamworks has now been upgraded to allow developers to use the tools to support such transactions. Players can now purchase in-game items within their Steam account.

Valve has also upgrades their Steam Cloud feature to allow for 100MB of data to be stored in the server per game (previously the storage capacity was a mere 1MB). There also also some interesting Steam stats in the PDF including the fact that there are 20 petabytes of data delivered via Steam each month (which, if you are unfamiliar with "petabytes" , is a lot. Look it up).