Valve's plans for Steam

Valve has released the sixth in a series of high-quality Bink movies showing direct-feed segments of the Half-Life 2 demo that made such a big splash at E3 in May. The new movie, called Bugbait, shows how Gordon Freeman can toss scented decoys around a level to attract some rather large alien bugs and lure them into attacking his enemies. More Half-Life 2 trailers will be released on Valve's Steam download service in the coming weeks.

Valve also released a statement explaining its larger plan for Steam, which has been in beta since early this year and is hosted in partnership with companies like Nvidia, Game-Storm.net, and Speakeasy. While the Steam beta currently offers access to games like Counter-Strike and Half-Life for free, Valve has said the service will offer paid products in the future.

"The delivery of these trailers is just the beginning of several activities and offerings we will be making via Steam with these partners," said Gabe Newell, Valve's cofounder. "Steam will broaden our relationship with companies such as Nvidia, and allow us to extend new offerings and services to our customers in both the current and future generation of our products."

Half-Life 2 is scheduled for release later this year. The new Half-Life 2 movie is available from the links below. For more details, check out our previous coverage of the game.