Rolling out with the upcoming demo of Valve's Left 4 Dead, Steam Cloud is a set of services announced back in March that will save various game settings on the server, so gamers will be able to easily transfer games to new machines with all of their tweaks and configurations intact. You'll be able to log into another system, log in Steam, and your game settings will automatically download to the new system.
"For some time now, Steam has allowed gamers to log on from any computer in the world and access their applications. This also makes it easy to upgrade a PC without worrying about losing your games," said Gabe Newell, president and co-founder of Valve. "Steam Cloud is a natural extension of the portability Steam affords gamers and developers, and we intend to expand its feature set as it is used in Left 4 Dead and other games coming to Steam."
The first release of Steam Cloud will support the saving of keyboard and mouse configurations as well as multiplayer settings. Valve is making Steam Cloud freely available to developers and publishers, and will also be adding support for the services to their back catalog. Hit the jump for more details.STEAM CLOUD ROLLING IN THIS WEEK Leading Online Platform for PC Games Extends Portability November 3, 2008 - Valve, creators of best-selling entertainment products and advanced technologies, today announced the roll out of Steam Cloud, a set of services for Steam that stores application data online and allows user experiences to be consistent from any PC. Steam Cloud is a free extension to Steam, a leading a platform for PC games with over 15 million accounts worldwide. Steam Cloud support will ship with Valve's Left 4 Dead demo later this week and the full game on November 18. In this first release, the information stored and accessible through the Steam Cloud includes keyboard, mouse, and gamepad configurations, as well as multiplayer settings such as spraypaint images. The Steam Cloud will "just work," meaning any user changes to their game options will propagate to the Cloud by default. Upon logging into Steam from another PC, these settings will be brought down from the Cloud and automatically leveraged by the game. Any configuration changes on this second machine are then synced to the Cloud for future sessions. Steam Cloud will be available to all publishers and developers using Steam, free of charge, and Valve will add Cloud support to its back catalog of Steam games. Cloud services are compatible with games purchased via Steam, at retail, and other digital outlets. "For some time now, Steam has allowed gamers to log on from any computer in the world and access their applications. This also makes it easy to upgrade a PC without worrying about losing your games," said Gabe Newell, president and co-founder of Valve. "Steam Cloud is a natural extension of the portability Steam affords gamers and developers, and we intend to expand its feature set as it is used in Left 4 Dead and other games coming to Steam."