Steam to add productivity, creative software in September
Valve has announced that Steam will expand beyond games and start offering productivity and creativity software beginning on September 5.
Valve has never been afraid to push the envelope to improve Steam, especially with such offerings as Greenlight and the Workshop. Now, the company has announced that Steam will expand beyond games into the area of software.
"The 40 million gamers frequenting Steam are interested in more than playing games," said Mark Richardson at Valve in a release. "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."
There are no details on which software titles will be available when the new section launches on September 5, other than the offerings will be in the areas of creativity and productivity. More titles will be added after launch, and Valve is encouraging developers to use Greenlight to submit their products for consideration.
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replyJohn Keefer posted a new article, Steam to add productivity, creative software in September.
Valve has announced that Steam will expand beyond games and start offering productivity and creativity software beginning on September 5.-
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megarust is now playing: Microsoft Office Suite
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I'll wait until the naked mod comes out for it.
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Tell me that if you could DLC to replace Clippy with Glados you wouldn't do it. You know you would...
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In a heartbeat
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"Previous testers choose not to use a comma in that location, results showed that they made the right choice, maybe you should join them?"
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that would actually be awesome.
also if you go through the menu to disable her she taunts you the entire time.
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This actually has the potential to be way better than Microsoft's Win 8 store, since any computer with Steam could download and run the software and have all licensing taken care of.
The one thing that really scares me is having more than just my video games bound by the Steam EULA.-
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Why is that? The Windows 8 store works just like you described. I have 4 computers all logged into my Microsoft account and they can all use the software at the same time. Pretty sure steam doesn't work like that. Not to mention it's only for Metro apps. I can install desktop apps as normal with out Steam DRM or login.
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Wonder if they will try to make game making software to tie into their greenlight stuff.
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You just blew my fucking mind, man
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So if you get banned from steam are you not going to be able to use photoshop or whatever?
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Yeah, this would a show stopper, for productivity tools, for me. Any kind of uncertainty of service (credit card issues, Internet connection, patching...) is unacceptable.
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If Steam can get me some cool music making apps, I'm in.
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*head explodes*
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I won't really call it "push the envelope" Impulse had this years ago.
Also I would be interested in what programs are actually going to use this and how much they would actually be used on a daily basis.
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Can we stick to the cold hard facts and stop speculating? If Microsoft wanted to close off development on Windows why the fuck would they waste their time with shit like Express Editions of tools. BizSpark, StudentWhateverSpark and the 1000s of different ways to get free tools and software from Microsoft for wouldbe / newbie developers and startups.
I mean really. This shit is beyond old.
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Using it right now, it isn't that bad. The only problem I'm having is getting to each app's settings page and search function through the Charms bar, which doesn't always want to activate on hover. And the store is a clusterfuck, not enough categorization/organization options. Otherwise, it's Windows 7 with some cool fullscreen shit that doesn't work half-bad.
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Two big concerns:
Multiple log-ins: How will they address it? If I can only have an application running on my desktop and not on my laptop at the same time, that is bad.
Offline mode: Even now it is still kind of sketchy and needs to be perfected. Someone isn't always going to remember to enable offline mode before signing off. What if I want to run a Steam application at the airport but whoops, I didn't enable offline mode before I left home. Now I'm stuck.
Both of these are things that the OS X app store does great with, and I'm assuming the Windows 8 store does as well. I don't need to sign in before enabling an offline mode to verify my purchases, and I can also be running applications on the same account on multiple machines at once.
Perhaps Valve can meet halfway and verify up to three machines and allow applications (not games) to run on those simultaneously, something like that.-
My gut feeling is that the Steam client, when updated to include these, will treat these apps as standalone, like if you had installed a non-Steam game shortcut, unless the app requires use of Steamworks API features like cloud saving. (and even then I could see Valve figuring a way to split that off). I cannot see them trying to enforce "one game through steam at a time" or even the online connectivity for that.
What I think Valve is trying to focus on is to provide alternate storefront from Win8's and Apple's, to provide easy push-based patch deliveries, and offer whatever it can from Steamworks to non-game apps (part of this larger effort to broaden the company's abilities)
Also, not yet mentioned, but I could see this integrating quite well with Steam for Schools program, as a way to manage many-seats of software with limited functionality to students, etc.-
We'll see if they change anything. Steamworks integration for applications was one of their bullet points so I don't think it'll work at all like what you think may happen.
DRM is a core component of Steam, so it installing applications in a separate folder as if you installed a non-Steam game seems highly unlikely.
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Valve's response: "Oh, you need your productivity software to do your job? Shouldn't have used that aimbot in CS, fgt".
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This was supposed to be in response to the VAC BAN post, oops.
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How 'bout finishing up big picture first? Before you move on to something else, ya know?
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I'm not too happy with steam at the moment. Purchased prototype 2 and have tried literally everything the interwebs have told me to do and still it crashes to desktop, granted this is first time something like has ever happened to me on steam but daaamn, taking foreeeeeeeeeever to get refund.
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