Valve Looks Beyond Games, Cooking Up Creativity and Productivity Software for Steam Platform
Valve described the move as a "major expansion to the platform most commonly known as a leading destination for PC and Mac games," and it's hard to argue with that statement. Steam has become the de facto standard for PC gaming in terms of digital distribution, and the move towards other kinds of software is both logical and exciting.
Starting September 5th, Steam will offer creative and productivity software, in addition to 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," Valve explains.
Valve says there are 40 million gamers already on Steam, which could be just the tip of the iceberg once business users and other non-gamers flock to the service. Details are still forthcoming, but we're told an initial batch of alternative, non-game software will launch on September 5th, followed by more titles being "added in an ongoing fashion."
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Good idea, but I really dont want to run Steam to be able to run mspaint... or have it running all the time to have my scheduler going, etc. I dont even want to run it while using my IDE. It would just offer distractions. I only run it when playing games for a reason. I would need to be able to have an auto disable of all social features when I launch non-game software. Another important thing, do I earn achievements? |
The real question is.. will expensive software suites by ridiculously cheap in the Steam Summer Sale? (; It annihilated my wallet this year.. Probably be worse if they start offering $400 software suites for $50 or something equally disgustingly cheap. |
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I know many of my friends who are power users make their Steam launch up immediately when they login and default to their Steam Library. In that library they have all the applications that they use in one viewing area and run it through the "non-Steam game" option. This just takes it one step further. |
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This is promising. Months back, I posited (http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?69486-Ryan-quot-Icculus-quot-Gordon-Will-Be-Speaking-In-Two-Weeks&p=254638&highlight=#post254638) that what Linux really needed to bring in developers was a cross-distro app store. At the time, I was thinking Desura might be that store -as it was the one going open-source. However, Valve may be entering a very good position given the 10's of millions of Linux users. |
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