Valve Software today announced Steam Cloud, a free service that will allow users to load save game files and configurations for Steam published titles across multiple computers without the need of moving data from hard drive to hard drive.

For titles that support the service, all of your game saves and settings will be stored online — permanently. To access the data, you’ll only need to log-in to your Steam account. And of course, data will be automatically cached so that it is still accessible when offline.

Valve-developed titles Half Life 2 and Counter Strike will be among the first titles to utilize Steam Cloud, along with Left 4 Dead, which is scheduled for a release in November. The company did note that all developers will be welcome to implement the service into their games free of charge.

“You can uninstall Half-Life, then come back to it two years later and finally finish Xen,” said Valve founder Gabe Newell.

Fantastic, fantastic idea.

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