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.
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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
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.
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.
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.)
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