Valve's Steamworks talk- important info on PC gaming and upcoming Steam features

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/?p=1834
If you missed this article, it's a great read, of a number of great points from Valve about the state of the industry present and future, and upcoming features for Steam and Valve games. Important things to note:

Steamcloud:
Steam will store savegames and config files offsite on Steam for you, so when you move computers your save games and key configs etc will move with you. Fuckin' A, Valve.

PC gaming current statistics:
"There are 260 million online gamers, and 255m PCs sold in 2007, Newell argues that the confusion over the PC comes from a dated perspective based around retail.

Valve, Newell states, are seeing a 200% growth in alternative ways of reaching gamers, and in the next three months expect to see this surpass that of retail."

Team Fortress 2:
53 different updates to TF2 have been made since the game's release, and there's no end in sight. Valve plans to continue to update and pamper the game (on PC, haha console suckers) for the foreseeable future.

Meet The Sniper
It's done, and will be released along with the next content pack for TF2. It was shown to the journalists at the event, and it's, reportedly, "great".

Audiosurf:
Dylan Fitterer, creator of Audiosurf, says his life was changed overnight with the release of Audiosurf. "Unlike the consoles, the PC lets Audiosurf have infinite scoreboards. Any song that’s released can have a scoreboard.
He explains that he has a direct line to his customers on PC. Consoles are “across a wall, away from all that.”
There are now over 10,000 videos of Audiosurf on Youtube.
“I did achievements in Audiosurf in two days, because Steam makes it so easy.”

Updates to Steam:
"Steam is working on: Driver auto-updating, a system-requirement checker, calendar functions, and “official” communities. This last one is exposing their tools to all other game developers. It lets developers’ customers get in touch with each other.

They also want to improve direct sales, presenting prices in local currency, updating the recommendation engine so people can more easily recommend games to each other, and tidying up the shopping cart."

Gabe Newell comments on the PC Gaming Alliance:
“Wrath of the Lich King will have a larger impact for the furthering of the PC than PC hardware developers getting together and agreeing the PC should be doing better.”

Piracy:
"During the development [of Left 4 Dead] they’ve never once had a discussion about piracy. It’s not, he claims, something they have ever felt the need to discuss."
"This is, Newell states, because of the relationship Valve has with its customers. He says that their players don’t want to pirate, and thus cut themselves off from that connection. And, he adds, the consequence of piracy are so huge to Steam players if they get caught. They can lose all their games. It’s too big of a chance."


Great stuff, great stuff. Don't you guys love Valve? I love Valve. God bless Valve. Sig Heil Valve!