Wednesday, August 8th 2012
Steam Expands Beyond Games, to Offer Software Soon
Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Team Fortress) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced the first set of Software titles are heading to Steam, marking a major expansion to the platform most commonly known as a leading destination for PC and Mac games.
The Software titles coming to Steam range from creativity to productivity. Many of the launch titles will take advantage of popular Steamworks features, such as easy installation, automatic updating, and the ability to save your work to your personal Steam Cloud space so your files may travel with you.
More Software titles will be added in an ongoing fashion following the September 5th launch, and developers will be welcome to submit Software titles via Steam Greenlight.
"The 40 million gamers frequenting Steam are interested in more than playing games," said Mark Richardson at Valve. "They have told us they would like to have more of their software on Steam, so this expansion is in response to those customer requests."
For more information, please visit SteamPowered.com.
The Software titles coming to Steam range from creativity to productivity. Many of the launch titles will take advantage of popular Steamworks features, such as easy installation, automatic updating, and the ability to save your work to your personal Steam Cloud space so your files may travel with you.
More Software titles will be added in an ongoing fashion following the September 5th launch, and developers will be welcome to submit Software titles via Steam Greenlight.
"The 40 million gamers frequenting Steam are interested in more than playing games," said Mark Richardson at Valve. "They have told us they would like to have more of their software on Steam, so this expansion is in response to those customer requests."
For more information, please visit SteamPowered.com.
59 Comments on Steam Expands Beyond Games, to Offer Software Soon
still, steam for app.. it's just weird.
When you have someone whose huge business is 99% catering to the Windows platform, in this case Gabe (regardles of your thoughts on the physical shape he is in), has concerns about MS closing off their OS, and when other developers show a similar concern, it's worth taking note.
Just my 2 cents.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_using_Steam_authentication
My question is who do i deal with if i have problems, valve's customer support is much like google's in that it's quite lacking...Yes but what is this based on? I've heard nothing from Microsoft or those who work for Microsoft hinting this. It's all paranoid delusions that come up after Microsoft announces that windows 8 will have a store and they will be in the digital distro business. As if suddenly they said windows 8 not RT will be walled off, when no such thing was said.
You know what is also bad everyone in the world having cancer, be pretty shitty if that happened.
^
That is the kind of statements that are flying around, well ofc X is shitty. So then do we have a valid reason to be afraid of X. No because evidence to cause concern is lacking.
I really don't think Valve is trying to change the entire business environment. To me this is just a way of providing another service people would want. I could see purchasing non gaming software off Steam depending on the need. Frankly I don't own much software on PC that is nongame. Yeah you can say "I want a physical copy," all you want but Best Buy is dying. Big box retail is dying. There are better discounts for online/digital and you have little overhead operating costs aside from running the servers and the network.
Who you want to trust is up to you. Personally there is no 100% trustworthy company IMO. M$, Apple, and probably even Valve would screw you over to get a buck. Although Valve doesn't seem as in your face with it. I like what Woz stated about Cloud recently. It really isn't a good thing for the industry. Going to be a nightmare in a few years. Your data is not secure in someone else's hands. Want security? Back it up yourself, throw it in a fire proof box and bury it or something. As long as it is there it is in your hands and it is secure.
By broken offline mode i mean that if you do not stop steam before shutting down your computer offline mode does not work before steam have had a concretion to the Internet when you turn it on again.
Also Steam doesn't have the monopoly, they have the best version of it ( i have ea origins and live! game(350 &PC) they are the competition,. just enough to make em move forward.
Steam is the most easy to use always on drm.
i came back to pc and i brought friends over because all they have to do is have steam to buy amd play.
at least its apple or microsoft that took that with shitty 20$ arcade game. and expansion wit h2 maps @ 15$
think About it
OMG, Valve is making a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat Pro available! Holy crap!
Will they come with steam achievements? :D
Let's set up a hypothetical example. You have an employee who wants something to do during his lunch break, so he buys a low-spec game on Steam - something like Half Life 1 maybe. He pays for it using his wife's credit card, and when she sees an unexpected transaction to an unknown place she phones the bank and reports it as fraud - yes, she should've checked with him but didn't. The bank reverses the charge and your account gets flagged and disabled for fraud. Sorry, your WORK account.
Another point, Steam doesn't allow for account sharing at all so each employee would have to have his own Steam account with products registered to him which would remain his after he leaves the company? Each new employee would need to have software purchased for him? If you're caught sharing a Steam account it can be disabled...
Stick to games, Steam. It's what you're awesome at doing, but I'll buy my software elsewhere.