Creative Assembly's epic strategy game Empire: Total War is now available to download on Steam

Valve's download service will also provide integrated support for Empire: Total War's multiplayer features, such as matchmaking, game statistics, and Achievements.

"By providing deep integration of Steamworks into their product, the team at The Creative Assembly was able to focus on the multiplayer game play of Empire and not worry about the back end services," said Jason Holtman, director of business development at Valve. 

During an interview with Eurogamer, Creative Assembly's communications manager, Kieran Brigdan, also addressed the question as to why CA and Sega decided to exclusively partner with Steam for online distribution, given criticism over the service's privacy functions and troublesome "offline mode".

"Steam offers us a lot of really good features. Rankings, achievements and automatic patching amongst others." Brigdan said. "Yes, it's also a copy protection method, and it does help there too, but it isn't the only reason we've chosen to go with it. From a development point of view it also offers us the chance to do a lot more of interest to the player. It's fully integrated into Empire with the ability to chat and invite others in etc. All things we've wanted to do for a while."

Follow the link for our glowing review of Empire: Total War.