Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Team Fortress) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced the first Software titles have launched via Steam, marking a major expansion to the platform known as a leading destination for PC and Mac games.

The Software titles now available via Steam are:

• ArtRage Studio Pro
• CameraBag 2
• GameMaker: Studio
• 3D-Coat
• 3DMark Vantage
• 3DMark 11

More and more publishers seem to be seeing Steamworks as the best viable DRM on the market and 2K Games is no exception. All PC editions of Borderlands 2 will use Valve's Steamworks suite as their DRM. Steamworks supports snazzy features beyond simple copy protection, Gearbox's shooter-RPG will also use it for multiplayer matchmaking, Steam Cloud storage, achievements, auto-updating, downloadable content, "and more." How Steamworks... works is that if you buy a boxed edition of Borderlands 2, you'll need to register the game with a Steam account, and launch it through Steam. The box will still contain a disc to install the game from, but you'll have the option to download it directly through Steam whenever you please. Digital distributors other than Steam will simply sell you a product key to activate on Steam. Steamworks was to be expected, really, as 2K Games has used it for PC editions of games it's published since Mafia II in 2010. It briefly dabbled in Games for Windows Live before then but, thankfully, that was a short-lived experiment.

Borderlands 2 is coming to PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on September 18. As ever, a selection of shiny things are on offer as pre-order bonuses.

Valve, creators of best-selling entertainment products and advanced technologies, today announced the roll out of Steam Cloud, a set of services for Steam that stores application data online and allows user experiences to be consistent from any PC. Steam Cloud is a free extension to Steam, a leading a platform for PC games with over 15 million accounts worldwide.

Steam Cloud support will ship with Valve's Left 4 Dead demo later this week and the full game on November 18. In this first release, the information stored and accessible through the Steam Cloud includes keyboard, mouse, and gamepad configurations, as well as multiplayer settings such as spraypaint images.

Valve Software, the master mind behind Steam is now seeking to expand with Steam Cloud, the next major update for the digital distribution service. Steam Cloud will allow gamers to store not only their game profiles and graphics setting, but also all of their savegames created through Steam for life. You won't need to worry about your savegames anymore. All the data will be automatically uploaded to back-end servers whenever you go online. It will be accessible from any PC at no cost and there will be no space limitations to worry about. The first games to offer Steam Cloud support will be Half-Life and Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress 2 and the forthcoming co-op shooter Left 4 Dead. Steam Cloud will also be freely available as part of the Steamworks set of developer tools. In addition, Valve plans a couple of other updates for the Steam platform in near future. They will include auto-updating of your computer's device drivers, social features including events and calendar systems, 'official' community pages for games, pricing localised to your country's currency, Amazon-style recommendations and shopping cart systems, and more payment options.