Any Valve Steam customer who does not live in North America got a rather enticing offer for a pre-load in Steam news today. As of today, everyone outside of North America can purchase and download (but not play) Quake Wars: Enemy Territory for $49.95USD or equivalent via Valve's revolutionary Steam. North American Quake Wars fans will have to wait until October 9th (this coming Tuesday) for their turn.

Those who pre-purchased Valve's first person brain twister Portal through Steam, either in the $44.99 ultra compilation The Orange Box or by its $19.99 separate listing, can now begin downloading the game's assets. Commonly referred to as pre-loading, the idea is to let gamers gradually download a game in advance so they only need to download a small enabling file on the day of its release, preventing owners from being held back by slow download speeds and clogged servers. With The Orange Box gone gold and confirmed to release on October 10th for PC and Xbox 360, the pre-load for Half-Life 2: Episode Two is also expected to begin shortly.

The beta of Valve's Team Fortress 2 is now playing on Steam for gamers who pre-purchased The Orange Box through Steam. In Team Fortress 2 players choose from a range of unique character classes such as medic, spy, sniper, or engineer and must work together to complete a variety of tactical objectives. The PC edition of The Orange Box - which also features Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Portal, as well as the complete Half-Life 2 series - is now available for pre-purchase via Steam through October 10th for 10% off the $49.95 regular price.

Valve today announced that 2K Boston and 2K Australia's highly anticipated first person shooter BioShock is now available for pre-order on Steam for the price of $49.95 in the US and $54.95 in Europe. Steam users can now begin downloading the game's assets, which will be unlocked and activated on the release date of the retail version: August 21 in North America and August 24 in Europe. BioShock is a first person shooter (FPS) that lets you do things never before possible in the genre: turn everything into a weapon, biologically mod your body with plasmids, hack devices and systems, upgrade your weapons and craft new ammo variants. According to Irrational Games (now known as 2K Boston and 2K Australia), BioShock is a revolution in the shooter genre that will forever change the expectations for the FPS. You can visit the official BioShock website here.

Valve has confirmed that the Steam Community, the studio's social networking and online multiplayer extensions for its popular game download service, will launch in beta form "at the end of the month," meaning gamers will have to wait no more than a week and a half to get their hands on the new features. First announced last month, the Steam Community promises features such as voice chat support, user profiles and groups, organized matches, and opponent tracking. "This latest update is just the start," said Valve founder Gabe Newell when Community was announced. "We've got a long list of items that we're working on to make it easier for gamers to connect and play games on Steam."

As the latest in a long list of publishers joining up with Steam, THQ has announced that it too plans to add its titles to Valve's popular Steam PC game download service. The following games are now available on Steam with a 10% discount through July 24: Relic Entertainment's Company of Heroes, Iron Lore's Titan Quest and Titan Quest: Immortal Throne, and Pandemic Studios' Full Spectrum Warrior and Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers. THQ plans to make available several additional games in the near future. On the way are GSC Game World's S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, Supreme Commander, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War Gold Edition, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War Platinum Edition, and Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Dark Crusade.

This summer Valve will ship a major update to its online gaming platform Steam, introducing an advanced set of community features to more than 13 million gamers around the world. Beginning in July, Steam users can set up their own personal Steam pages and profiles, create and join groups, schedule games with friends, review who they've played with, see how well everyone played, chat with groups, chat via voice, and more. These new community services and features can be used with all Steam games, which include new releases and classic titles from leading publishers and independent developers. Free of charge, the new community features will be accessible via the Steam desktop client and via the web. For more information, please visit www.steampowered.com.

Japanese developer and publisher Capcom has announced it will begin selling its titles through Valve's PC digital distribution platform Steam. Today's announcement marks the latest of Capcom's efforts to support the PC, which include upcoming ports of the former Xbox 360 exclusive Lost Planet: Extreme Condition as well as Devil May Cry 4. Capcom's Steam offerings will begin later this week with the release of Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition, which originally appeared on PlayStation 2 and was only recently released on the PC. A PC version of Onimusha 3, which also appeared on PlayStation 2, will arrive in the following weeks, with Lost Planet: Extreme Condition arriving on Steam the same day it hits retail, June 26. No mention was made of the recently released PC version of Resident Evil 4.

Steam is the right place for us to go with our titles. Valve has created a huge installed base of gamers who naturally fit with the profiles of the titles that Capcom develops.

said Capcom executive vice president Mark Beaumont.

Valve has announced that effective immediately, ATI Radeon owners can download a free copy of Half-Life 2: Lost Coast and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch through Steam. The software will automatically confirm the presence of ATI Radeon hardware and offer access to the two games. In related news, Steam will be included with the ATI Catalyst driver and software suit until early 2008 and ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT owners will, upon release, receive Team Fortress 2, Portal, and Half-Life 2: Episode Two through Valve's content delivery application.

UPDATE: I talked to Valve and they confirm that once you activated the free ATI games, you will keep them, even if you swap to an NVIDIA card. Just ask your friends for their ATI card.

Valve today announced that Steam, the Bellevue, WA based company's pioneering PC platform for digital content, has surpassed 13 million active accounts since its launch in 2002. With over 150 games and 2500 updates in a broad selection of genres and dozens of other PC applications, movies, and demos available, Steam has become a leading destination for millions of gamers around the world. The activity of online gameplay via Steam averages over 7 billion player minutes per month. This summer, more major publishers will announce that they are bringing their games to Valve's platform, using it for electronic distribution and including it in their retail product releases in order to take advantage of features such as anti-piracy, server browsing, marketing promotions and more.