Valve Announces Steamcloud, Not Afraid of Piracy

Valve had a mini-summit in Seattle today and detailed a few of their plans for the future. We are thrilled and now we feel the love. We also understand that all those who kept saying that digital distribution is the future are slowly starting to have a point. Because of various reasons. Let's check a few of them, as said by Valve and reported by website rockpapershotgun.

First of all, the thing that matters most for us, honest gamers, is the plan to introduce a service called Steamcloud. This great and innovative idea, which will hopefully get implemented really soon, will change a bit the way PC games are played. And all these because Steamcloud will bring a new system for storing player data, from keyboard configs to save games, which means that you will be able to continue playing exactly where you left off (or last saved), no matter if you play from home, an Internet cafe or your friend's place! And all using the controls you know and got used with - without having to re-define keys and such.

Also, Valve plans to bring even more stuff to its customers - great things such as auto-driver update and a system that checks your PC to see whether it can run the game you want to buy. No more waste of money from now on - or, at least, from the moment Valve implements this.

Also, as you know, Valve's Gabe Newell is a huge fan of PC gaming and used the conference chance to say that again: PC games are not dying, but evolving and if everything is done correctly, the business will flourish. Newell said that he's not afraid of piracy and no game developers should be, if Steam is included:

"When you list the things that we worry about in our business, piracy is not one of them. We've got great facilities that make it very hard for people to pirate," he said. "And more importantly, the service value of having an ongoing relationship with us is high enough that it causes people to not be very interested in piracy. It's a dangerous thing to pirate one of our games because later on, when we catch you, you lose all your games, or you can't play multiplayer."