EA releases titles on Steam worldwide

It seems that those rumours were true and that Electronic Arts has finally decided to take full advantage of Valve's Steam platform to release some of the publishers games - in the US and most of Europe, at least. The UK and Japan are being oddly neglected.

While early indications hinted that Spore might be coming to Steam, Valve has announced that Spore is just one of the EA titles to be featured on Steam.

Electronic Arts will be releasing Spore, Mass Effect, Need for Speed Undercover and FIFA Manager 2009 on Steam very shortly, with more titles coming in the future. EA has already promised that the coming weeks will see the addition of Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3, Mirror's Edge and Dead Space.

The first few games in the list launched on Steam yesterday for American users, but a Valve press release says that the line-up is now being rolled out over most of Europe too - though curiously the titles aren't yet visible for UK or Japanese users.

Electronic Arts has traditionally stayed away from Steam, despite being partnered with Valve for the retail releases of The Orange Box and Left 4 Dead. Spore will be the first game developed by an EA studio to launch on Valve's online platform, as the EA published Crysis and Crysis Warhead games were developed by external developer, CryTek.

Electronic Arts will continue to operate its own digital storefront in the form of EA Store where customers can buy the full EA catalogue.

Steam now has over 15 million users across the world, with the last 18 months seeing the platform launch a series of new initiatives, such as localised pricing and Steam Cloud.

Will you be picking up any of the games above? Let us know in the forums.