Valve Software on Wednesday announced that it will soon begin offering non-gaming software on Steam, the company’s popular digital distribution platform. The software categories will range from “creativity to productivity,” and software tout many of the same features found in the company’s gaming offerings, such as easy installation, automatic updates and the ability to save work to the Steam Cloud. “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.” Steam is currently available on PCs and Mac computers, and a watered-down version is available on Android and iOS devices. A Linux port has also been announced and will be available in the future. Valve will begin selling non-gaming software through Steam on September 5th. Read more for the company’s press release.
STEAM EXPANDS BEYOND GAMES
Launch Set of “Software” Titles Coming Sept 5
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.”
