In a recent email, Valve has announced that starting September 5th non-game software will be available for purchase on the steam platform. Software will be subject to the new Steam Greenlight submission process that was announced earlier this summer.
[quote_simple]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.”[/quote_simple]
With Linux ports coming, and entire movie releases, Steam is becoming an increasingly universal platform. Almost scarily so. Hopefully we’ll see the same sort of sales and competitive pricing that happens with the games market.
I’m not sure what to think of this – but since I make big use of Steam I guess it can only benefit in the long run.
I love Steam and have virtually all my games there but I can sometimes not help but think what would happen if the company would collapse.