Bethesda: PC Rage uses Steamworks
Now there's a name for a police officer.
The PC version of Rage will use Valve's Steamworks tools, Bethesda has announced.
"Since folks are asking," Bethesda tweeted, "we can confirm that Rage will use Steamworks on PC."
Steamworks injects Steam at a development level. The benefits are that a game can take full advantage of nearly anything Steam offers; things like authentication, peer-to-peer multiplayer, voice communications, matchmaking, Steam communities, friends, statistics and achievements.
The down side - at least as far as rival digital distributors are confirmed - is that you can't then remove Steam from the game.
Will any competing digital distributors boycott Rage as they did Modern Warfare 2?
Rage is id Software's sumptuous-looking post-apocalyptic racer-shooter. Tom Bramwell dived in for a meaty two-hour session recently at QuakeCon 2011; his lengthy Rage preview followed.