Software publishing giant Electronic Arts has teamed up with Valve to use Valve's Steam digital distribution system to increase sales of some of its major titles. These include Mass Effect, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning and Spore.

The above games are all available for download. In the next couple of weeks, Steam will also have some of EA's more recent titles available for purchase, including Mirror's Edge, Command and Conquer Red Alert 3 and Dead Space.

With the introduction to Steam, Spore no longer uses the highly controversial SecuROM DRM, as was adamantly stated by a moderator on the Steam forum.

"If the game did have third party DRM, it would also be listed in the games store page... I am certain that SPORE uses no form of third party DRM on Steam. The only DRM SPORE uses on Steam, is Steam itself."

While the moderator made no specific mention of the other titles, it is quite possible that SecuROM was also removed from them as it is no longer needed. However, games such as Crysis have retained 3rd party DRM despite being purchased through Steam.

In addition, a de-authorization tool has been released for copies of Spore not purchased through Steam, allowing customers to reclaim their limited activations with BioShock. A note is made on the tool's webpage that User Account Control should be disabled prior to using the tool if the PC is running Windows Vista.

Spore Creepy and Cute Parts Pack, FIFA Manager 2009 and Need for Speed Undercover are also available for download through Steam.