EA announced that starting with Monday it will begin to sell its popular video game Spore free of all digital rights management (DRM) restrictions.

The company decided to team up with Valve and its Steam distribution platform and release alongside Spore, many other titles such as Mass Effect, Crysis, Crysis: Warhead, Warhammer Online, Need for Speed Undercover, FIFA Manager 09, and SiN Episodes: Emergence.

"We are pleased to extend our holiday titles to gamers worldwide via Steam—a revolutionary technology that is one of the game industry's most successful digital distribution services," said John Pleasants, President of Global Publishing and COO of EA.

"EA is one of the industry's largest publishers," Valve's Gabe Newell continued. "The EA titles coming to Steam this holiday include some of this year's top PC titles."

EA decided to move in this direction in order to attract new customers and also keep its present fan base happy. Until now, the company used its own digital distribution system through its Web site. Gamers were able to purchase EA games directly through the company’s Download Manager, which were sent from EA’s servers. Still, many gamers were not comfortable with EA’s software in their systems and demanded a change. The company decided to collaborate with Steam in order to provide a non-intrusive DRM scheme for releasing its products – and so far the decision appears to be the right one, as users expressed their excitement on various Internet pages.

Other EA games expected for release through Steam are Mirror’s Edge, Dead Space and Command and Conquerer: Red Alert 3.