Valve Announces Steamcloud

[Hectic Glenn]

Rockpapershotgun.com were present at a mini-conference with Valve, who unveiled some of the details regarding their new venture, Steamcloud. Essentially it will bring what makes your Steam account yours, to every computer you log into. This means all your saved games and keyboard configurations will be stored by the Steam back-end.

To begin with we will see Half-life and Counter-Strike starting with Steamcloud support (it will be free to download of course). The good news is that Left 4 Dead will ship with it already supported.

If you're offline, Steam caches the data locally, and then uploads it as soon as it can. Save games will also be kept forever.

Alongside this great idea, Steamcloud will also bring with it "Driver Auto Updating" to keep everything running smoothly AND system analysing, where Steam will be able to analyse your system to assess whether you are going to be able to play a particular game. Positive news ahead for Steamcloud, watch this space. Also other mentionable news from this conference...

• Gabe Newell and Jason Holtman are both keen to expand Steam's catalogs of games, but also provide confidence in developers to allow these games be available worldwide, rather than continental restrictions
• Meet the Sniper is on it's way for the next Team Fortress 2 "Meet the..." videos. It comes highly rated!

Sources - Steamcloud Summary details from conference and RPS Live Blog

[Shinobi]

honestly this is a little more than I would ever want..

I guess it's good for those who dont have a lot of computer experience (specifically the driver stuff) but for me I would rather manage my computer by myself.

[Zephos]

Woo for saved games being carried over.

[highlander]

oh f*ck yes. Go valve!

[6Three]

Steam, Steamworks, Steamcloud = Crytek, Crysis, CryEngine ?????

[Corp. Sheepo]

I was told Meet the Pyro!

[FoxFire]

Originally Posted by Corp. Sheepo

I was told Meet the Pyro!

No, they're working on Meet the Sniper, but the next class to get achievements and new weapons will be the Pyro.

[Xendance]

Good news post, Glenn.

[Kadayi]

Originally Posted by Xendance

Good news post, Glenn.

Glenn beat Evo & Digi to their PMs box

[-Psy-]

Yes! Valve are attempting to help non-techy people see if they can run games or not. This is exactly what PC gaming needs.

[AHA-Lambda]

Wow, I really didn't expect something like this

Valve. Best developer ever?

[scotland1]

Originally Posted by Hectic Glenn

Left 4 Dead will ship with it already supported.

Awesome.

Originally Posted by Hectic Glenn

Steamcloud will also bring with it "Driver Auto Updating" to keep everything running smoothly AND system analysing, where Steam will be able to analyse your system to assess whether you are going to be able to play a particular game.

Double awesome!

[jondy]

Fantastic.

Is anyone else now thinking along the lines of SteamOS?

[Corp. Sheepo]

Originally Posted by FoxFire

No, they're working on Meet the Sniper, but the next class to get achievements and new weapons will be the Pyro.

Where did you hear that? The Meet the Sniper part may be true, but I know the pyro achievements have not been confirmed.

[Escape]

All your saved games are belong to us.