Electronic Arts (EA) has finally decided to join Valve Software's download service, Steam. The publisher released today a major slate of titles on the game network, filling in a number of the online catalog's more noticeable gaps. Among the group of new arrivals on Steam, we can find Will Wright's Spore and its expansion, Spore Creepy & Cute Parts Pack, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, Mass Effect, Need for Speed Undercover and Fifa Manager 2009. Furthermore, EA plans to release Dead Space, Mirror's Edge and Command & Conquer Red Alert 3 on Steam next month.

 

However, a small part of the publisher's games have found their way onto Steam in the past, as downloadable counterparts to EA Partners titles like Crysis, Crysis: Warhead, Half-Life: The Orange Box, and Valve's own Left 4 Dead have appeared on Steam. It's now clear for EA that gamers did not like SecuROM and DRM. This move looks like an effort to win back PC gamers, as EA has now made its big 2008 titles available on Steam without third-party DRM. The company first tried to save face after the Spore backlash by reducing the abrasiveness of the SecuROM implementations in its other software, but that did not please all the gamers.

 

Anyway, EA's presence on Steam really looked like an impossibility at one time, and that's because the company still maintains its own digital distribution system through its website. The EA Download Manager allows gamers to purchase EA games directly from the company and download them through EA's servers, but that has proven highly unattractive. It remains to be seen if EA will take back its gamers with this move.