Steam, a leading online platform for PC games and digital entertainment, has added four new titles to its lineup.
Via a deal with Valve, Steam will deliver MEDIEVAL II: TOTAL WAR. With more than 10,000 troops now to command and hundreds of unit types, players can experience massive battles in graphically rich environments enhanced by dynamic weather effects and vastly diverse terrain. Leading armies across Europe, the Middle East and even the Americas, players will encounter brutal realtime battles of medieval warfare.
"MEDIEVAL II: TOTAL WAR is a highly anticipated blockbuster title from SEGA and working with Steam gives us a great digital distribution vehicle to get the game quickly and easily into the hands of hungry fans everywhere," said Simon Jeffery, president/coo, SEGA of America Inc. "Steam has proven itself time and time again as a quality content delivery site that gamers look to for secure and reliable downloads."
Featuring single player and multiplayer modes, MEDIEVAL II: TOTAL WAR will sell for $49.95.
Valve and GSC Game World, makers of the legendary COSSACKS series, have partnered with Steam to make Chapter I of the HEROES OF ANNIHILATED EMPIRES trilogy game available to Steam's 10 million connected gamers.
"We are very happy to start working with Valve to distribute our latest creation via this mighty online distribution platform. This agreement is an ideal complement to our self-publishing start-up, and we look forward to forging a very fruitful relationship with Valve, both now and in the future," said Sergiy Grygorovych, ceo at GSC Game World.
HEROES OF ANNIHILATED EMPIRES combines two of the industry's most popular genres -- RTS and RPG. Players may take either a strategy or RPG-like approach to the single and multiplayer game modes, leveraging more than 100 spells or commanding giant armies.
HEROES OF ANNIHILATED EMPIRES storyline was created by a renowned author Ilya Novak, and will be available via Steam for $39.95.
SimBin and Valve will bring RACE - THE OFFICIAL WTCC GAME to Steam. In addition, all retail copies of RACE sold for the PC in the EMEA territories will include Steam functionality for auto-updating, matchmaking and anti-piracy encryption.
"Delivering RACE via Steam means more than 10 million gamers will have the chance to purchase the world's first ever World Touring Car Championship game directly from their PC," said Henrik Roos, ceo of SimBin. "Powering the retail version RACE with Steam means every player will have all the latest content available for the game and be able to enjoy the industry's most advanced set multiplayer services."
With more than 60 different and accurately modeled cars and 10 officially licensed tracks from four continents, RACE offers all the drivers, cars and locations featured in 2006 WTCC championship season, while offering support for both single and multiplayer games, in a race against up to 26 real players or online AI opponents.
Independent Software developer Garry Newman and Valve will also bring GARRY'S MOD to Steam.
"The new version has been created from scratch so almost everything has been revised and re-invented," said Garry Newman, creator of GARRY'S MOD. "It has a bunch of new tools to play with (winches, hydraulics and hoverballs), totally new spawn menu and a few new Post Processing effects to play with. The great thing about Steam is that I can update really regularly, really easily, which is something I plan on doing, so expect more tools/gamemodes/stuff to come."
The first commercial release of GARRY'S MOD will be made available on Nov. 29, 2006. Since a Source-based product is required to run GARRY'S MOD, Valve will be offering a special bundle of GARRY'S MOD plus COUNTER-STRIKE: SOURCE for $24.95. For those who already own a Source-based game, GARRY'S MOD will be sold separately for $9.95.
For more information about Steam, visit www.steamgames.com.
SEGA of America Inc. is the American Publishing arm of Tokyo, Japan-based SEGA Corp., a worldwide leader in interactive entertainment both inside and outside the home. The company develops, publishes and distributes interactive entertainment software products for a variety of hardware platforms including PC, wireless devices and those manufactured by Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony Computer Ent. Inc. For more information, visit www.SEGA.com.
One of the most renowned East-European game studios, GSC Game World is a developer of more than 10 game releases. The recently launched company subdivision GSC World Publishing handles the publishing GSC's games worldwide. For more information, visit www.gsc-game.com
SimBin Development Team AB is a Swedish game developing company making interactive entertainment for all leading gaming platforms. The company possesses a global distribution network with its main markets in Europe and the U.S. SimBin was founded in 2003 and has a total staff of 70 people, consisting of 50 employees at the headquarters in Vara and the development studio in Gothenburg, and 20 distributed consultants worldwide. For more information, visit www.simbin.com.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
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