Once again, Valve has prooven their prowess and will to further the advancement of game development techniques and technologies.
Introduceing "Steamworks," a free library of tools that will allow game devs to relatively quickly add many features that are currently available in Steam-based products such as mp-matchmaking and the serial key system that locks keys to countries and certain release dates. Also, the use of the tools does not required the game to be hosted by Steam.
This is part of Valves leading aggenda to provide game devs the means to focusmore on the development of their games rather than market release and infrastructure development. It's part of Valves strive to once again make developing game simply that, and not a tug of war between publisher, market, and fans. (Rememeber EA's lawsuit with Valve over Steam . . . Valve won, which means EA makes no profit off of Valve games bought through Steam. Which means other studios can sell through Steam [provided there is no direct pre-existing contract] without having to constantly hand over funds to their publishers.)
Ultimately, Valve is become what Nintendo was in the late 80's. They are once again revolutionaizing the game dev scene, attempting to free the shackles of slaver many studios have faced with major publishers, like EA.
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Please Note: Much of this post is my opinion of Valve, hardened by the relase of FREE tools for devs.
