Valve: ‘We’ve made DRM obsolete’

Valve has unveil a new set of advanced features for its Steamworks platforms at GDC, offering a complete suite of publishing and development tools that promise to make DRM a thing of the past.

In a statement to the press Valve points to the Custom Executable Generation technology as the primary update to the Steamworks tool set.

Described as a customer-friendly approach to anti-piracy, CEG makes unique copies of games for each user, meaning they can access the application on multiple machines without install limits and without having to install root kits on their PC.

"Delivering this extension of services on Steamworks’ first anniversary, demonstrates our commitment to continually develop the platform to better serve the community working with these tools," said president and co-founder Gabe Newell. "As we roll out these features, we continue to look for new ways make PC games easier to create and better for customers to experience."

The new feature set, which is available worldwide with Steamworks free of charge, also includes support for in-game downloadable content and matchmaking, meaning developers can provide free or paid updates from within any given game.

Fully integrated with Steam, In addition to the services added in the new expansion, Steamworks offers support for Steam Achievements, Steam Community, auto updating, Statistics and Steam Cloud.