EA joins the digital download hipsters at Steam.

In an interesting move, EA has partnered (or licensed or signed as agent) with Valve's Steam service. The initial round of games available includes Spore, Mass Effect and Warhammer Online. One would think that EA would have a digital download plan, but maybe using a third party gives them some buffer so they are not directly competing with the bricks and mortar they so heavily depend upon. Steam is one of the longest running (if not longest) digital download purveyors, so EA picked a tried and true company. One of the kickers is that the downloads don't include DRM, the games depend on Steam as the security. This is great news if you like and use Steam, or if you've been stung by some of the DRM debacles (see Spore). Joystiq has the rest of the games available, but they are silly games like Need for Speed and Fifa something or other. Is my bias showing?