The free Steamworks suite offers solutions for everything from auto-updating and social networking to matchmaking and copy protection in PC games. Unreal technology has been licensed widely by titles as diverse as Batman: Arkham Asylum and BioShock.

"Epic's technology is one of the most widely used engines in the industry and has powered many of the best games created in the past 10 years," said Valve co-founder Gabe Newell. "It's an honor to have Steamworks included in the technology offered to all Unreal Engine 3 licensees. It's hard to think of a larger, better targeted group of developers who could derive more benefit from the Steamworks services."

Epic has made good use of Steam itself, allowing all owners of its shooter Unreal Tournament 3 to activate their copy on Steam and running three 'free weekends' that opened the full game to everyone through Valve's digital distribution platform.