Epic Integrates Steamworks into Unreal Engine 3

Steamworks is Valve Software's cloud computing solution for games.  For a big fat price of free, it allows game developers to integrate with Steam and it's many tools: anti-piracy, cloud, matchmaking/lobbies, and DLC.  Epic, developers of the Unreal games and graphical engine, have announced they will be integrating the Unreal Tournament 3 engine with Steamworks:

Epic Games and Valve Software have announced a mutually beneficial partnership to bring Steamworks to Unreal Engine 3. Valve's full suite of tools will now be offered to Unreal Engine licensees completely free of charge.

Steamworks allows developers to utilize any of the features of Valve's digital distribution platform in their own products, including Steam Cloud save importing, Achievements, user stat tracking, and DRM authentication. It's normally available for free, but its integration into the latest version of the Unreal Engine should encourage even more developers to utilize Steamworks.

"Valve has created a world-wide phenomenon with Steam and we're excited to be able to have the Steamworks suite of services available to Unreal Engine 3 licensees so they can take full advantage of all that Steam has to offer," explained Epic's Mark Rein, adding, "With Valve offering these services free of charge, the idea of providing the Steamworks SDK to all Unreal Engine licensees was a no-brainer."

I'm very curious to see where this leads. 

The number one annoying aspect of Steam is that so many games don't use its core functionality.  This forces gamers to track a dozen different game IDs and logins.  For example: Games for Windows Live games sold through Steam or games that come packaged with Gamespy for multiplayer.  Steamworks gets rid of all that and plugs a gamer's Steam right into the game, no extra managment required.  It is nice to finally see some bigger developers come on board with Steamworks.

Another Free UT3 Black Weekend

Epic and Steam are at it again, offering a free weekend of play for Unreal Tournament 3 Black.

Play Unreal Tournament 3 FREE this weekend! Visit the UT3 game page to start pre-loading and be ready to play as soon as it starts Thursday at 1:00PM PDT (8:00PM GMT).

For anyone interested, start the pre-load now, its a fairly large download.

MMOs On Steam 20% - 75% Off, WAR Not Included

Steam is hosting a sale on MMOGs.

Most of Steam's Massively Multiplayer games are on sale through the 19th, starting today.

Curiously enough Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, one MMOG that could use a little boost in sales before its next big patch, isn't included in the list. Between this and Mark Jacobs semi-absence as of late, it has to make WAR fans wonder what is up in Mythic-town.

However, SOE isn't missing the boat, with almost all of their MMO games on Steam for sale. From Everquest II to Pirates of the Burning Seas, they've got it covered.

I would be very interested to see how this sale helps out each of these games. Unreal Tournament III saw a fairly healthy revival when its price tag was slashed on Steam:

According to Valve, that strong spike was a 2,000% increase in simultaneous players in the game (UT3). Additionally, the game held the top spot on Steam's bestseller list.

Of course, UT3 didn't carry the baggage of a monthly subscription, so it may be a little apples to oranges, but it does show that older games can have new life breathed into them via the greatest PC gaming platform on earth.

Unreal Tournament III Free Weekend Play

My Internet has been down all day thanks to my ISP trying to block my wireless router's MAC address, otherwise I would have posted this sooner. Unreal Tournament III can be played for FREE this weekend via Steam. Plus it's on sale for %40 off (making it just $11.99).

Load up Steam to play Unreal Tournament III, and the recently released Titan Bonus Pack, for free, until 1PM PST, March 15th.

One more reason to love Steam. One more reason I am loving my shift to FREE (aka the best value in town) gaming.

And for anyone getting started this weekend, READ THIS FIRST!

Linux Updates

Trying to keep up with relevant Linux news is tough, as most of it is just a dog and pony show for the top distributions. Most of that news turns out to be a battle between which camp can come up with a more retarded name for their Linux package (Ubuntu I'm looking at you).

However, we have a very positive Linux gaming tidbit to cover today. BeyondUnreal has a short e-mail confirming Linux client and server files for the already-in-demo-stage Unreal Tournament 3.

Heh, thanks. The dedicated server should be along very soon, but the Linux client won't be here tonight, for those waiting for it. I have set up a mailing list for UT3 linux and mac discussion, and I'll be announcing things there when they become available. Send a blank email to ut3-subscribe@icculus.org to join the list. Thanks, --ryan.

I love this sort of news!

On the non-gaming front, Linux and the Mac OS may both be susceptible to a flaw that Windows is currently in the process of patching. Instead of trying to do the tech dance, I'll just quote the relevant information:

In fact, Nathan McFeters, one of the researchers who has been studying the problem most closely says he hopes to present more details on how other Unix-based operating systems like Linux and Mac OS X may also be susceptible to what are known as URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) protocol handler flaws at the Toorcon hacking conference, being held next week in San Diego.

Well that is all I have for right now, so please enjoy.