Epic's Unreal Goes up on Steam

The signs were always there that Valve was bend on becoming a superpower. They were always humble. After the huge success of Half Life one, they quickly went back to work. They toiled for seven years to release a sequel and justified it all by saying that they wanted to make a perfect game. And Half Life 2 is pretty close to being perfect. They created a digital distribution channel, called Steam, that originally only delivered updates and that now is preparing to offer music and video to its customers. And in the process, they have been clearly plotting to take over the PC gaming world. All they need is to blow up all the DVD factories so that people can only get their games off Steam.

Epic has announced that it will offer its collection of games on Steam. The first up are Unreal Tournament 3 and Unreal Gold, with all the games in the Unreal series soon to follow. There's also a special offer on Steam in which you can pay close to 60 dollars to get your digital hands on Unreal 2: The Awakening, Unreal Tournament: Game of the Year Edition, Unreal Tournament 2004: Editor's Choice Edition and, of course, Unreal Tournament 3.

Jay Wilbur, vice president at Epic Games, declared: "Steam is a revolutionary technology that opens up an entirely new way to put our games into the hands of millions of PC gamers around the world. Valve has changed the face of digital distribution for game developers, publishers and consumers, and we are thrilled to be a part of the Steam community." In other words, there's money to be made on Steam and we want a piece of that cake.

Epic's move is relevant if seen as part of a bigger picture. There's a multitude of industry insiders that profess that the disk-in-a-case distribution channel is obsolete and that games need to move to digital distribution entirely. And even if the shift isn't total, there are clear signs that channels like Steam are becoming clear competitors of direct retail.