Valve Announces Steamworks: Free Tool Suite Available to All PC Developers

This has to be one the most confusing press releases ever.

Scenario 1:
Valve seems to be saying that developers and publishers can set up their own little mini-steam system within their own environments; meaning EA Steam, Blizzardvision Steam, etc.

While the tools themselves are for the most part better than what exists currently, I fail to see any additional consumer benefits. We will still have a segregated PC user base, we still have to worry about multiple community tools and configurations to play games, we still don't have a unified PC gaming platform. Additionally, I am 100% positive publishers and developers will fuck around with piles of additional restrictions which will be per mini-steam environment (or not) creating significant consumer confusion in the long run.

People are making comparisons with Xbox Live, but in this scenario, you will not have a unified platform and most certainly would be missing out on the greatest feature of Xbox Live (universal community connectivity) in addition to the other Xbox Live benefits.

This is more like Valves version of an enhanced Gamespy like system.

Scenario 2:
On the other hand (and the scenario I am leaning towards), is that Valve is saying that everyone will use their Steam but the developers and publishers can have control over how they distribute the game, and what Steam features they wish to support.

In other words, Steamworks is mearly a "prep" package for Valves Steam, without the need to distribute through steam.

The RPS article and RomSteady's questions seem to support this scenario but there is still considerable confusion here, most notably absent is the benefit of going this route over simply publishing on steam as it is setup now, or the pricing for the steam services you wish to support.

Either way I fail to see how this benefits developers. Instead of paying a publisher independent entity like Gamespy for community features, they are paying their direct competitors for such services. They would have better tools but at the high price of supporting their competition in the process.

Scenario 3:
Collect underpants?

As another developer pointed out a while ago (sorry can't recall who it is at the moment), Valve should break away Steam Powered into an independent company, separate from Valve entirely with its own board of directors and independent goals. In fact, it would be nice to see them to open it up as a not-for-profit to a committee of publishers and industry figures covering all aspects of PC gaming, from indie to big bucks publishers and finally have a unified PC gaming space.

.. because there seems to be a great conflict of interest at this point.

hey ive gone to the steamworks in toronto many of times!

This is absolutely amazing for PC game developers, and won't mean much to everyday consumers except for that they will get much better games. This is good for Valve because it means a lot more developers will be into Steam! The timing of this lines up with GDC perfectly (no mistake), as they will be targeting developers with this. Thumbs up Valve! What a lot of people take for granted in games are actually some incredibly complex things to tackle for developers, and here Valve is basically tell us to throw out our hammers and giving us a nailgun. The upside for them, built by Valve, they become the framework, bad for Microsoft and the slew of other people starting to poke at the digital distribution market (including us!). :)

Here's RPS's interpretation:

It’s a bit confusing what this will actually means, so here’s what we understand: A publisher can sell their game in the shops or distribute it digitally via their own system, customers install it, and then have Steam drop in the executable. It kills off day-one piracy in a single shot. Bam. Then updates will be delivered automatically for the game via Steam, and all the post-release stats and tools will be available, with Valve charging no one any money for this at all.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/?p=1011

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.

Boooooo!

"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. "

Lets hope this is the deathknell for Gamespy and GFWLive.

Although lol @ TF2 comment. Not quite http://www.onlinegamingzeitgeist.com/graphs/games_10_players.png

So wait. This means that a developer could use this to create their own version of Steam? So instead of one nice central location on my PC to get my games and updates and friend lists and server browsers, there might be 100 different versions of Steam all used by different publishers? Argh. What am I missing that makes this news cool and not horrible?

am i interpreting this wrong or are they trying to do what Live does for xbox?

Now it's time for the token questions:

1) Did they ever get it so that you could sell additional content piecemeal or have a prerequisite sale condition?
2) Is this just for .GCF file systems or for the older file systems?
3) While the tools may be free, what is the percentage cost per Steam sale to cover this? Per retail sale? Are these negotiated per title, or is there a set percentage used because you are using Steamworks?
4) What support requirements are developers required to abide by to keep come of these going? Ritual just stopped getting "SiN Episodes" stats updates after awhile.
5) Have the tools been made a bit more user friendly? Steaming up a game using .GCF's wasn't exactly the most enjoyable experience on the face of the planet.

Hah, I -knew- google image search would pop up that headline picture you used. Lazy whores, it's the first result on the first page.

Incidentally, you could have warned me Google Image Search for 'Steamworks' also provides gay porn and a goatse image x.x

http://www.steamworksonline.com/home4.html

I can already tell most of the Shack is gonna enjoy Steamworks... a lot.

They should be informed that www.steamgames.com/steamworks is 404 at the moment.

Actually I would like to get a better picture of what this means for the end user.

It doesn't sound like they're just giving more tools to non-Valve developers/publishers that use Steam; it sounds like at least some of this stuff applies whether or not someone distributes their game on Steam. If any of the features require a Steam-like service to be running, then I hope we don't see a proliferation of those.

How do I join the shacknews group on steam?

It will be interesting to see how this works and how Valve will tie into this to generate revenue.

Wow. Just wow.

wow this is really cool. Valve once again showing everyone they rule.

Steamworks was a gay spa/club in Melbourne.

Exciting stuff. Can't wait to dig into it.

This really is awesome. Kudos to Valve.

I'm not certain, but this sounds mega massive.

So can someone actually publish games to steam with this?

I don't understand why Windows Live requires a fee. Valve has proven all this can be offered for free.

Great but will there be a fix coming for taking 1 minute to load Peggle through Steam instead of instantaneous if I installed the game from Popcap's website?