Valve to Expand Steam Store Beyond Games on September 5

Wednesday August 8, 2012 12:54 pm PDT by Eric Slivka

Valve today announced that beginning September 5 it will expand its Steam store for digital distribution of gaming titles to include other types of applications. The expansion of Steam to other software categories could pose signification competition for other digital marketplaces such as Apple's Mac App Store.

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.

Beyond simply serving as a comparable alternative for the Mac App Store, the Steam store could become a convenient distribution point for software that is not compatible with Apple's Mac App Store guidelines. Apple's limitations such as sandboxing requirements have resulted in some applications not being accepted for distribution through the Mac App Store or required that certain features be removed, and Valve's Steam store is likely to be more lenient in those regards.

Hints of an expansion for Steam appeared last month within the Steam app for Android, which briefly showed new categories of software for the store.

Top Rated Comments

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Dagless

10 months ago

I hope it adds Achievements to Photoshop.

Rating: 38 Positives

Skika

10 months ago

I bet Microsoft is more pissed at this than Apple.

Rating: 19 Positives

VPrime

10 months ago

This could be an amazing thing for both users and developers.
I personally trust valve more than apple when it comes to digital purchases... They have been doing it for a long time, and doing it extremely well.

Rating: 17 Positives

nagromme

10 months ago

Glad to hear it, I think Apple's App Store is wayyy too pricey on most products. Compare them to other digital retailers and they are almost always more expensive. Competition would be good!

I can’t think of any examples where a Mac app has moved to the App Store and gone up in price; and I can think of many examples where they’ve gone down (though that might have happened anyway with the passage of time). And I see many desktop apps (games and utilities) now being $1-$5 on the App Store, which would have been $10 to $50 in the past.

What apps have gone up in price due the App Store? I’m not saying it hasn’t happened, I’m just curious because I’ve never noticed.

Also, it’s the developers who set their product pricing, not Apple. So if there’s a problem of software costing too much, the solution is not about price competition between Apple and Valve, but about price competition between individual software developers. But we've always had that.

This is nice, but, Steam on my 2011 MBP barely runs. Locks my whole laptop up and uses up about 50% of my i7 just idling.

Anyone else getting this issue? I've done multiple fresh installs but it just doesn't seem to click. I only have it installed for Portal 2.

That’s a shame. My 2011 11” Air runs the Steam client, Portal 2, TF2, and other Steam titles just fine. (Native OS X, not Bootcamp.)

Rating: 10 Positives

Mundty

10 months ago

Glad to hear it, I think Apple's App Store is wayyy too pricey on most products. Compare them to other digital retailers and they are almost always more expensive. Competition would be good!

Rating: 10 Positives

bungiefan89

10 months ago

I hope it adds Achievements to Photoshop.

THIS LOOKS SHOP'D
Remove the white background from an image in less than 1 minute.

SINNER
Save an image that includes the Comic Sans font

HEADSHOT
Decapitate an image of a celebrity using the cropping tool

ZEN AND THE ART OF RELOADING
Install new fonts

RICH AND PORE
Airbrush the pores off of a celebrity's face

DUMBEST SMART PERSON
Use Photoshop for something you could have used MS paint for

THE IMPOSSIBLE ACHIEVEMENT
Make a reference to Through The Fire and the Flames in an image

NOOB
Export a file as a jpeg

I could go on for hours like this... :D

Rating: 9 Positives