Valve today unveiled Steam Cloud, a new set of services for Steam that stores application data online and allows user experiences to be consistent from any PC. Steam Cloud is a free extension to Steam, the company’s digital-distribution game platform.
Steam Cloud support will ship with Valve’s Left 4 Dead demo later this week, as well as with the full game, which ships for PC (and Xbox 360) on Nov. 18. In this first release of Steam Cloud, the information stored and accessible through the Steam Cloud interface will include keyboard, mouse and gamepad configurations, plus multiplayer settings — yes, including your spraypaint images.
Any user changes to their game options will propagate directly to the Cloud and be active by default. Upon logging into Steam from another PC, the settings will simply be downloaded from the Cloud and automatically inserted into the game at hand. Any configuration changes on the second machine will then be synced to the Cloud for future sessions on another PC.
Steam Cloud will be available FREE to all publishers and developers using Steam. Valve plans to add Cloud support to its entire back catalog of Steam games. Cloud services will be compatible with games purchased via Steam, at retail and other digital outlets.