Hell, maybe Microsoft will choke and send its games to Steam within a couple years.

nah....

Fair enough.  While Steam does allow some games to be registered, not all that many are on the list yet.  It is an ever increasing list though.

Anyway, Epic is basically the last major step.  You could argue that Microsoft may never join, but they publish very few PC games themselves.  EA and Ubisoft surely aren't far behind after Epic.  Epic and Valve were once bitter rivals.  If Epic  can get on Steam, no one else will really have an excuse. 

Also,
Unreal Gold
Unreal Tournament: GOTY Edition
Unreal Tournament 2: The Awakening
Unreal Tournament 2004: Editor's Choice Edition
Unreal Tournament 3

all for $53.95? Definitely not a bad deal. I'll pass since UT3 disappoints me, but Epic is still a great developer and it's good to have more on Steam.

so say if you buy a game off of steam and it is 4 gig, do you have to download the 4 gig straight from the developer, do they compress it, use some kind of torrent thing to reduce their bandwidth? also if it is 4 gig of download, can you burn it onto a dvd so that you can uninstall it later and not have to redownload 4 gig?  I assume that Valve gets a cut from this but it would also seem that more money would go to the developers off of this because they cut out the retail, just a cut to the publisher and valve and more to the devs, would that be correct?

Well, you could burn it to a CD I suppose. The game files are in the Steam folder after all.

I don't know if it's compressed, but their servers are very good and I've never had anything take longer than 4 hours to download (that's for a really big game).

As far as the actual profits, early estimates were that a developer makes about 70% of a game's sale price on Steam versus about 30% in a retail store, so yeah, less copies can still mean more money. I don't believe Valve's cut is actually very large. Most of that 30% the developer loses is still the publisher. Valve just requires enough cash to keep the servers smooth.

Most of what Valve gets in money through Steam is advertising.  They sell space on the front page of Steam to the publishers on Steam.  They also of course get the money from their own games' very strong Steam sales.  They don't really need much of a cut.  They do take one, but it's very small. 

You download from Valve's servers, which are generally reliable. On big releases, I WOULD advise you to pre-purchase a game. Pre-purchasing often gets you a 5% discount, you'll be able to play immediately when the game becomes unlocked (except for a few last minute updates sometimes), and the servers can get a little slower right at release time.

You can burn your game onto a DVD.

They cut out the retail and the developer does benefit more than they would from printing out DVDs and putting them in stores, the benefit is very significant I'm sure.  Valve gets enough dues I'm sure, the appropriate share to keep everything running and expanding Steam for the benefit of all the developers.

lol, I remember the days when Steam was brand new with the release of Counter-Strike 1.6 and it was very unreliable (freezing and such).

I also remember the Half-Life 2 launch as well as participating in the numerous pre-dowloads for it.

Amazing how it's come from something so bare, to something so full of features. If they can continue to do this and be successful all for free, I'll be amazed. I consider Games for Windows Live and Xbox Live to be total ripoff's if I have to pay for the same features that I could get for free on the growing PSN (growing, but still meh at the moment) and Steam (getting more awesome every day).

About buring the games, I believe there is an option when you right click and look at the game's properties on Steam to be able to make a backup of it. I haven't done it myself, but I'm sure it'd be nice so you don't have to download a ton of stuff again.  

By long term, I'm positive Epic will be satisfied with their sales on Steam.
Unreal deal pack (UT3+old Unreal/UT games) is currently in 1st place, and UT3 standalone is in 7th.

I just looked at the steam website and was suprised to see that Epic didn't put Gears of War on there also.

Probably because Microsoft published Gears of War and I believe you have to deal with Microsoft's amazing Games For Windows Live as well.