Casual game developer, PopCap Games (Bejeweled, Zuma) and Valve has teamed up together to bring PopCap Games titles to Steam. Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve, says the team up “is an important step for the growth of Steam and direct distribution channels.”

“The benefits of Steam will now be provided to a much wider group of games and game customers”, he went on. “PopCap games by themselves are larger by an order of magnitude than the next-gen consoles online gaming services.”

According to a statement by PopCap, the company has gotten “175 million downloads and three billion player minutes per month.” There will be 17 PopCap titles at launch on August 30 for a free trial period and purchase. PopCap collections will also be available.

“We’re thrilled to be the first casual game publisher to distribute our games via this new channel; we’re all Steam users here in the studio, and it’s going to be very cool to see our own titles up alongside such awesome content as Half-Life 2.”

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