Valve has grabbed another important deal, Assassin's Creed will launch on Steam.

I've just placed my pre-order with glee. I'm a fan of the stalk-action genre, games like Thief and Hitman are among the few single-player games that I consider to have substantial replay value.

When I saw the pre-order banner for Assassin's Creed on Steam yesterday, I almost thought it was an April Fool's joke. The trend lately has been for big title games to release first via boxed Windows Live / Games for Windows retail versions and maybe arrive on Steam later.

I was this close to placing an order at EB for the boxed version, but not quite. Like Gears of War, it was almost enough game to push me over, but the combination of steep minimum requirements, expectations of intrusive copy-protection and the pre-mentioned Windows Live thing held me back. Steam to the rescue!

This is the current make-or-break game for PC gaming, there aren't a lot of big-name games in its wake. It broke sales expectations on the Xbox 360. I'm hoping that it wakes up some dormant PC gamers, because it should be a stellar game to highlight all those new videocards.