Steam Expands to non-game software

Fruity Snacks

Creator of blackholes & memes. Destroyer of forums
aa
Sep 5, 2010
6,394
5,571
Found this today, sorry for the ign link
Here is the joystiq article
And Rock Paper Shotgun

Valve has announced plans to expand Steam beyond gaming. The digital distribution service will begin offering software ranging from creativity to productivity and will integrate Steamworks features including easy installation, automatic updating and the ability to save work to the Steam cloud.

Software will begin to arrive on Steam on September 5th and will continue to be added from that point forward. Developers will also be able to submit their titles to Steam Greenlight, which allows the community to rate products to determine whether or not they should be sold on Steam.

I don't know how productive you can be while on steam, but okay. I think this is a pretty interesting shift, and am interested to see where it goes.

inb4 SteamOS
 
Last edited:

YM

LVL100 YM
aa
Dec 5, 2007
7,135
6,056
SteamOS? Surely that's Coal? or Wood, maybe even Gas (localised to Petrol for British English).
 

Pocket

Half a Lambert is better than one.
aa
Nov 14, 2009
4,694
2,579
Who wants to have to launch all their apps through Steam, though? That's like 90% of the reason nobody wants Windows 8.
 

Exist

L6: Sharp Member
Oct 31, 2009
306
136
At first, the idea struck me as pretty good. I wouldn't mind having one solid place where I could buy software, install it, and use easily. I also would enjoy the cloud service that is now native to steam. Actually the cloud feature would be great for small studios who's workers aren't in the same area. It would become a sort of Skype environment where people can create, store to the cloud, and then easley share amongst co workers.

But then I remembered, what if I wanted to work mobile, offline. Steam is notorious for their offline mode (let's me honest) being subpar. I don't need to go into detail here, anyone who has ever attempted to use the offline mode on any title bound to steam knows the horrors it holds. I feel that would be a large turnoff to many, even myself, as I do enjoy messing around in Hammer or any toolkit when I don't have a stable connection.
 

Freyja

aa
Jul 31, 2009
2,994
5,813
Who wants to have to launch all their apps through Steam, though? That's like 90% of the reason nobody wants Windows 8.

No one wants windows 8 because it's a terrible, touch-centric UI.

I'd totally dig a SteamOS. I'd uninstall my windows and mac partition on my laptop on a heart beat.
 

A Boojum Snark

Toraipoddodezain Mazahabado
aa
Nov 2, 2007
4,775
7,669
I don't know how productive you can be while on steam, but okay.
steam.JPG


But on a more serious note... isn't the SDK/Hammer basically a productivity program? We do it for fun, but lets be honest here.
 

Gus

L1: Registered
Feb 28, 2012
26
17
Software will begin to arrive on Steam on September 5th and will continue to be added from that point forward. Developers will also be able to submit their titles to Steam Greenlight, which allows the community to rate products to determine whether or not they should be sold on Steam.

This is just for softwares or for games too? If so, I'm pretty excited about it. I mean, a steam workshop for indie games? Sounds pretty cool.