The latest publisher to join Steam is Epic Games which is bringing along the Unreal games including Unreal Tournament 3. There is a starting offer with all of Epic’s games available on Steam receiving a 10% discount. You can also purchase the Unreal Deal Pack for $59.95. This Unreal Deal Pack includes all of the Unreal games available on Steam ranging from Unreal II to Unreal Tournament 3.

“Epic is a leading developer of game engine technology and has produced some of my favorite games of all time,” said Gabe Newell, president of Valve. “It’s an honor to be working with them and offering their current and classic titles to the millions of Steam gamers around the world.”

“Steam is a revolutionary technology that opens up an entirely new way to put our games into the hands of millions of PC gamers around the world,” said Jay Wilbur, vice president of Epic. “Valve has changed the face of digital distribution for game developers, publishers and consumers, and we are thrilled to be a part of the Steam community.”

Head over to Steamgames for all the latest on how to get these unreal games.

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It seems these days that Epic don’t know where their minds are at. First off they are members of the PC Gaming Alliance which is a nice enough thing for them do seeing as they have been PC aficionados for so many years. Then we had Cliffy B claim that PC Gaming was in disarray which was followed by Mark Rein calling him an idiot.

More recently Tim Sweeney commented that mainstream PCs are no good for gaming and now we see Tim say that Unreal Engine 4 will be console focused!

TG Daily: Let’s talk about your game visions for the future and the next Unreal Engine? Where is EPIC going with the Unreal Engine 3.5 and 4.0?

Sweeney: The Unreal engine is really tied to a console cycle. We will continue to improve Unreal Engine 3 and add significant new features through the end of this console cycle. So, it is normal to expect that we will add new stuff in 2011 and 2012. We’re shipping Gears of War now; we’re just showing the next bunch of major tech upgrades such as soft-body physics, destructible environments and crowds. There is a long life ahead for Unreal Engine 3. Version 4 will exclusively target the next console generation, Microsoft’s successor for the Xbox 360, Sony’s successor for the Playstation 3 – and if Nintendo ships a machine with similar hardware specs, then that also. PCs will follow after that.

From TG Daily interview.

Epic really don’t know what they want, they are members of the PCGA which is aiming to promote the the PC and improve it as an all round platform…but then we have other Epic guys saying they are going console focused. Someone needs to get their act together at Epic and make sure they are all speaking from the same page!

The past few weeks have seen numerous comments by some leading figures at Epic concerning the death of the PC, the PC Gaming Alliance and whatever else they feel like chatting about. In a new interview with TG Daily we see Tim Sweeney, the man behind the Unreal games, take a swipe at ‘Mainsteam PCs’ and integrated graphics.

TG Daily: But we mostly talk about conventional retail sales. Do you see an increasing divide between the Pc and consoles?

Sweeney: Retail stores like Best Buy are selling PC games and PCs with integrated graphics at the same time and they are not talking about the difference [to more capable gaming PCs]. Those machines are good for e-mail, web browsing, watching video. But as far as games go, those machines are just not adequate. It is no surprise that retail PC sales suffer from that. Online is different, because people who go and buy games online already have PCs that can play games. The biggest problem in this space right now is that you cannot go and design a game for a high end PC and downscale it to mainstream PCs. The performance difference between high-end and low-end PC is something like 100x.

He has a good point about many PCs that can be purchased at mainstream stores are utterly crap for playing games, and most PCs nowadays should come ready installed with a low-end graphics card at the very minimum so people can actually play some games.

However, anything that comes out of Epic does nothing to help solve this problem right now. They make fantastic 3D engines…but they are often so high-spec and -tec that even those with somewhat decent gaming rigs are struggling to play games from Epic and their engines.

If their involvement in the PCGA changes their approach then that would be brilliant.