We spend a lot of time comparing available delivery options for watching content, especially when it comes to digital downloads. While it is possible to tune in to the right TV station at the right time to catch your favorite show, you can also download digital copies of the content and watch them at your convenience. iTunes (Etilities Forum) is currently the poster-child for this philosophy, and by now you are likely very familiar with what is possible and how it works. But did you know that you can do the same with videogames?

Instead of ordering your games from Amazon or picking them up from a brick-and-mortar store, you can buy a digital copy of the title of your choice, download it, and install it without leaving your couch. Two of the biggest players in this ring are Direct2Drive and Steam. I’ve personally used both and don’t have anything bad to say about either. Steam is more centered around its community of over 1 million users, making it easy to maintain online friendships that span more than one game. In the world of online gaming, the value of a game is often linked to the friends you’ve made along the way, and Steam helps spread that value to the other games you might want to play.

In a nod to Steam, Electronic Arts (EA) has just added some of its biggest hits to the online store, including Spore, Warhammer Online and Mass Effect. As an added bonus, the games will be stripped of any third-party DRM. This is quite meaningful, as the EA brand became strongly linked with the general unpopularity of DRM mechanisms when the much-hyped game Spore was released this fall laced with invasive DRM. EA is no doubt hoping that this will appease some of the angry gamers that had not only been boycotting EA games but also giving it a whole lot of bad press every chance they got.

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