Activision, Double Fine Join With Steam

Gamespot reports on the expected arrival of Double Fine's Psychonauts on Steam, and the unexpected announcement that Activision is now offering games on the service. Titles from the company include Call of Duty, Call of Duty 2, and Gun, which was developed by Neversoft. From that article: "Whenever Valve does open the digital spigot on the four Activision games, they will join an increasing number of third-party titles available on Steam. This week, Majesco's critical hit Psychonauts was made available on the service, and Ubisoft's Dark Messiah of Might & Magic will launch on the service later this month."

Comments

Valve is becoming a publisher

[yincrash]

Valve is on it's way to becoming a bigger publisher of other people's games. It's a new avenue of offering games that is definitely in use.

Re:Just wonderful

[Keith Russell]

It insists on running upon startup.

It defaults to running on startup. You can turn that off in the Options dialog.

checks for unnecessary updates

Back home, we call those "bug fixes".

let's the publisher know that you're still playing their games

Well, I haven't gotten a nastygram from Valve for not playing enough Day of Defeat:Source, so no harm, no foul.

What happened to the days when product sales actually let the industry know how many people were playing/enjoying their games?

What happened for me? Deux Ex: Invisible War. Bought it, played about two hours of it, and got sick of the console-based dumbing down, tiny zones, and constant barrage of lecturing from NPCs on the radio. Put it back on the shelf. All Eidos knew was that a particular shipment to the Best Buy on McKnight Road sold out after n days on the shelf. There's a big difference between "Sales are OK, but tapering off, and the critics aren't too happy" and "According to our aggregate numbers, everybody's giving up before the plot moves out of Seattle."