Although some gamers are just now waking up after a marathon session of Cod Blops since picking the game up at midnight, PC users who purchased the game via Valve's digital distribution service were forced to wait until this morning.

One user claimed to receive an email response from Valve's Gabe Newell, where the company's co-founder noted that "pricing, territory, or availability decisions" for products other than its own were not made by Valve. Although Black Ops runs on the Steamworks platform, retail PC owners of the game were able to play immediately, bypassing the Steam activation timer.

Note that some users on the Steam forums are reporting a number of errors and some slowdown when attempting to purchase or activate their copy of Black Ops.

Have you played the game? What are your first impressions?