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EA snags Valve’s meatspace distribution rights

Well, it's been speculated that this would happen for awhile, since Valve's split with Vivendi Universal left them without a distributor to shuffle boxes around the world, now we just now for sure who it gets to be. It isn't quite the doomsday scenario of "EA buys Valve", but it's still the two of them getting together, which can lead to any number of horrible potential futures that I'd rather not think about.

So, what all does this deal cover? If it's New, from Valve, and you buy it in a box rather than online through Steam like you should, then EA was responsible for putting it there. Specifically, this will cover things like the upcoming Xbox release of Half-Life 2, a Game-Of-The-Year edition of Half-Life 2 & Friends [HL2:DM, CS:S, etc] for PC, future standalone boxed releases of Counter-Strike: Source, future boxed anthology releases of older Valve products [probably a Steam-ified version of the previously released HL/CS/OpFor/BlueShift/Every Official Mod Ever box], and boxed versions of any future games Valve may release [ "Just in time for the 2037 Holiday Season: Half-Life 3!" ].

Is this relevant to you if you buy your Valve games through Steam? Not at all.

Source: GameSpot

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