EA Launches Steam Titles In Europe

Following its North American introduction to Steam last week, publisher Electronic Arts made several of its PC titles available in Europe through Valve's digital distribution platform. The games released so far for the region include Spore, Spore Creepy & Cute Parts Pack, Mass Effect, EA Sports FIFA Manager 2009, and Need For Speed Undercover. As in North America, EA plans to release several additional titles to Europe through the service in the coming weeks, including Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, Mirror's Edge, and Dead Space. Other major publishers like Activision, Ubisoft, Take-Two, and Atari have long sold games through Steam, but until now, EA was a notorious holdout. Previously, the publisher digitally distributed internally-developed PC games only though its own EA Store as well as Steam competitors like Direct2Drive. For several years, however, EA has had a close relationship with Valve; the company took over as retail distributor of Valve's games following the severing of the studio's ties with former publisher Vivendi. According to Valve, Steam claims over 15 million active user accounts around the world.