Some of Valve's most popular games are now available for purchase and download via Gamestop's Impulse PC digital download service. This is very rare as Valve has never allowed any of their titles to be published by other digital retailers. These titles include Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, Portal 2, The Orange Box, and Half-Life Complete. Despite these titles being available on Impulse, users will still need to register the games through Valve's Steam service in order to play them. With Impulse being a direct competitor to Steam, offering titles developed by Valve may be a sign of Gamestop conceding defeat. Gamestop may realize that even with a rather large amount of popularity, Impulse is unable to dethrone Steam. Impulse has tried hard to top Steam with its daily deals and support for indie developers to release their games, but despite these all of their efforts, Steam has still consistently topped Impulse.

Despite Valve's increasingly popular Steam digital PC download service, the developer has decided to offer some its most popular titles on Gamestop's Impulse service. This is the first time the developer has allowed its titles to be published on a digital service outside of Steam. It goes without saying that this is quite the shocker as Valve has had a tight grasp on the digital PC download market for a few years now.

RchrdJ via gamergaia.com »