Steam to sell non-gaming software

By MightyJordan
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Grand Master

MightyJordan

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Valve is to begin selling non-gaming software on Steam later this year.

The Counter-Strike and Half-Life maker said that many of the "creativity" and "productivity" software titles offered on the digital distribution platform 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.

Software titles will launch on Steam on September 5, and developers will be able to submit them via Steam Greenlight.

"The 40 million gamers frequenting Steam are interested in more than playing games," said Valve's Mark Richardson. "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."

Steam offers over 1,800 games, and saw unit sales rise by more than 100 percent for the seventh straight year in 2011.

Valve said last month that Steam's Big Picture mode - the announced but still under wraps new feature that'll bring Steam games to your TV - is "coming soon".

Well I certainly didn't expect that! But it's a pretty logical move though when you think about it; large user base, plus Steamworks would be great on regular software for updating. I'd actually love to see that on the Mac App Store too. Or is it already there and I haven't found it yet? :p

EDIT: Here's the official press release from Valve... http://store.steampo....com/news/8584/

Steam Expands Beyond Games

Launch Set of "Software" Titles Coming Sept 5

Aug 8, 2012 -- 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 www.steampowered.com.

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Grand Master

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Valve will now proceed to take over the world, THE WORLD!

Also, I'm playing this new game on Steam called Symphony (really neato music shooter game, I suggest you guys check it out!) and the "evil thingie" that sends demons after you and such, I just see this evil entity being Gabe Newell sitting in his chair in the Valve HQ holding a knife and giggling.... :p

Grand Master

MightyJordan

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Also, I'm playing this new game on Steam called Symphony (really neato music shooter game, I suggest you guys check it out!) and the "evil thingie" that sends demons after you and such, I just see this evil entity being Gabe Newell sitting in his chair in the Valve HQ holding a knife and giggling.... :p

Nice suggestion; just watched the trailer, and it looks really interesting. :) I'll wait and see if it makes an appearance in an indie bundle. :p

Grand Master

Phouchg

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No! No, please! I'll give all my money in the coming Winter sale and I'll cheat on my taxes so I can spend more just for this purpose, just so I don't see the day when Steam slowly transforms into something akin to Play, where every wretched shytestain of a comp. sci. submits their glorified hello worlds.

Ok, not really... but I hope that kind of bull* exclamation speaks for the disaster I'm foreseeing if this new development goes through :(

Grand Master

PsYcHoKiLLa

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As I said elsewhere, I have a guess Adobe will buy into this, they have a really big piracy problem and Valve's anti-piracy methods for games have been quite good (although not infallible).

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