Wow. Um,…wow. This is a pretty big leap forward for Steam and the digital distribution of games. Steam is a service created by Valve which allows you to buy and download full featured games right to your computer. And when I say full featured, I’m not talking about the deluxe version of Bejeweled. I’m talking about hardcore gaming, multi-gigabyte, super mega games like Half-Life 2, Call of Duty 2, and Counter Strike: Source, just to name a few. It’s a fantastic service, but I didn’t always think so.

When Steam was first introduced back in 2002, I was flat out against a service like this. One reason for this is because I liked to be able to put my new shiny games in my nice shiny game rack, but also…who in their right mind would want to download a 1+ gigabyte videogame over the Internet? Well as it turns out, I would. It took a few years of persuasion, and a whole new philosophy toward what the Internet can and should be used for, but I finally saw the light. People buy music and movies from places like iTunes, why are games any different? And Steam has a great feature that iTunes doesn’t, infinite downloads. Okay, I’ve never actually read the fine print, but I must have downloaded games like TFC, CS, CS:S, DoD:S, Half-Life 1&2 dozens of times, on half a dozen machines, and I’ve never had so much as a hiccup. Once you buy a game through Steam, help yourself to as many downloads of that game as your heart desires. But enough of why I am a born again Steam user, and on to the news at hand.

id! Before this, Steam’s video game library was comprised mostly of Valve’s own titles and games from a handful of independent developers and modders. With the exception of a few mainstream games, like the Call of Duty series and the Civilization series, the Steam library was devoid of any third party heavy hitters. Well that’s all history now. id software is the heavy hitter of the heavy hitters. According to Shacknews, every id title will be available through Steam… though I didn’t see Quake IV in the line-up. Maybe I just overlooked it. Regardless, if this doesn’t help launch the digital distribution of games to a new level, I can’t imagine what will.

Whose next? I would love to see the Battlefield series on there, but I think it would be a cold day in hell before EA sold a game through Steam. Then again, they may be crazy not to.