The Steam Review

Valve have just launched their Steamworks partner website, and wonderfully, it’s partially open the public.

Are you a PC developer or publisher who isn’t using Steam or Steamworks yet?
If so, read about why Steamworks is the PC gaming platform of the future. When you’re ready, get in touch.

This site covers many of the technical details under Steamworks’ hood. The links below cover some of the basics; once you’ve signed up you’ll get access to much more in depth information about how to make use of all Steamworks has to offer.

Scanning the API documentation it seems that using the tech really is as easy as Valve have made it out to be. Authenticating a multiplayer client takes a single line of C++, and the ever-tricky problem of sending data directly from one client to another is much the same. Valve don’t recommend that developers use the Steam server browser however, which is an odd thing to say considering it’s been one of Steamworks’ selling points in the past.

The other publicly-available page, Running your game on Steam, details the practical aspects of getting your content to Valve. This amounts to:

1. Create the image
2. Apply any special settings
3. FTP it
4. Wait until it appears later in the day

Again — incredibly, liberatingly simple.

So simple in fact that there isn’t much more to say about it! So here’s GamesIndustry.biz’s recent Steam interview with Doug Lombardi to keep you occupied instead. 🙂

Do you use Steamworks? I’d love to hear from you!