Steam is the biggest online digital content distribution network out there. Owned by Valve, the company responsible for major hits like Half Life or Portal, it had, at first, only a few games in its portfolio, but now it has reached over 450 titles available for over 15 million user accounts. The newest addition to the system's large number of games is the popular football managing simulator, Football Manager 2009.

Part of this new agreement between the developer of the game, Sports Interactive, the publisher, Sega Europe, and Valve is the incorporation of Steamworks into the game. Steamworks is a suite of programs that offers valuable feedback to the publisher and developer, and which gives the player access to game updates and DLC (Downloadable Content). Furthermore, Steam will also be the host to the launch of the demo of the game, which is set to appear a couple of weeks before the launch of the title, slated to hit the shelves of European retailers on November 14.

"Many of us at Sports Interactive have been big fans of Steam since it's inception, so to be working with them properly this year across releases of Football Manager on the PC is fantastic," said Miles Jacobson, studio director at Sports Interactive. "It gives us the opportunity for all of our games players to get any patches or updates that we make available quickly and easily, as well as a place for us to host any other downloads, such as demos and promotional videos, with super fast broadband speeds for download, and no issues with bandwidth, which we are hit with each time we release a demo."

The game is now available for pre-orders on Steam, which will be honored at 9:00 AM GMT on November 14. No doubt this is great news for all the FM 2009 fans out there. The game is very addictive and the possibility to play it anywhere using a PC on which Steam is installed is definitely very tempting.