Valve's Steam distribution service has certainly had its ups and downs since its inception, but it seems to have stabilised nowadays as it enjoys it's widespread acceptance as a platform. As you should know if you have Steam, games you purchase can be played on an unlimited amount of computers, so long as only one is playing it at any given time.

Valve today announced that it would extend this service with Steam Cloud, which will allow users to store their save progress to a server, ready to be downloaded on any computer you may use. This feature will also extend to screenshots and video replays, with absolutely no restrictions on the data size or how long it's kept online.

Theoretically, if you get sick of a game and decide to leave it for a few years, you could come back and pick it up exactly where you left off and get sick of it all over again. This service will initially be offered for most of the Valve created games (the Half-Life series, Counter-Strike and Team Fortress 2), Left 4 Dead and will also be on offer for any games created on the Steamworks platform.

In not so good news, Valve has also hinted that localised pricing for countries will also be on its way, amongst a slew of other features. I'm not entirely sure that's a good thing though...

That steamcloud thing is awesome. No more restarting games.

Localised pricing completely sucks ass... there is absolutely no reason for it, other than to milk each market for all it's worth..

Localised pricing completely sucks arse... there is absolutely no reason for it, other than to milk each market for all it's worth..

True but it was always going to happen. If they can make more money they will do it.

Part of Steam's popularity is the fact that you can get stuff a lot cheaper on it, so I really can't see localised pricing working, unless it turns out we'll get things cheaper.

Ha, the one reason I use Steam is because I can get games cheaper. Without it, there's no bloody reason not to go to the store and grab a copy.

Also, Valve suck. Took them two months to fix my TF2 after it broke in an update. First they told me the problem was some software I didn't have installed for a piece of hardware I don't own. Then they told me that the problem was the Windows security settings, and how to go into console to turn them off to play TF2. They also told me this was dangerous, and not to leave it like that, or my family could be raped and murdered by a transforming windows malware bot, or something. Good work Valve.

Now I have to run it on minimum settings to get it to work AND it takes me two minutes to connect to a server because my computer has to upload an empty 1MB packet before it connects FOR NO GODDAMN REASON. Fix your netcode, you shitdicks.