Wednesday, August 8th 2012

Steam Expands Beyond Games, to Offer Software Soon

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."

For more information, please visit SteamPowered.com.
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59 Comments on Steam Expands Beyond Games, to Offer Software Soon

#51
digibucc
[XC] Oj101Another point, Steam doesn't allow for account sharing at all so each employee would have to have his own Steam account with products registered to him which would remain his after he leaves the company? Each new employee would need to have software purchased for him? If you're caught sharing a Steam account it can be disabled...
because a per-machine license is impossible? not saying they'll do it or that any of this is even worth discussing - but your point is the least damning of any. corporations simply wouldn't pay for software to be licensed to their employees. period. so the system would not work like that,
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#52
TheMailMan78
Big Member
They could simply just sell the games via steam but not need steam to be running to use the programs. Just the first install. That I could deal with.
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#53
Mistral
So, when will I be able to get CS6 on a 75% off STEAM sale?
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#54
TheMailMan78
Big Member
MistralSo, when will I be able to get CS6 on a 75% off STEAM sale?
30 years from now......15% off.......and that will be "mid week madness!"
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#55
jpierce55
TheMailMan78They could simply just sell the games via steam but not need steam to be running to use the programs. Just the first install. That I could deal with.
I would have to speculate that, it might use Steam to verify the install. I can't see the requirement for business software (if they do business software) to have Steam running as something that would go over well at all. It would require extra resources and many businesses have out of date hardware, especially companies that would buy software from a vendor like Steam.

So far Steam has not made any very bad decisions, I would not expect to see them make a bad decision on this.

FWIW, I agree with the idea that Steam has horrible customer service, or more precisely, none at all. Regardless, selling software does not mean they will do any of the customer support.
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#56
Drmark
I would never buy a steam application. Traveling, overseas, limited internet or none? Who wants to be limited by valve on when you are allowed to use the software you paid for. I have been in German hotels with no internet, same with planes. Gee thanx valve, I'm on a 13 hour flight and not allowed to work a minute during the flight. In a minor provence in China, nope... no internet, no work.
I stopped buying steam games that require an internet connection to play local.
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#57
cadaveca
My name is Dave
None of my STEAM games require internet to play... You simply enable offline mode before leaving local access. Then only need internet on first time the app is run, so new apps when away, sure, but I've got a box at the lake with STEAM, where internet access just isn't possible, just checked it a few days ago, and everything was working fine.

It wasn't always that way..when I built the cottage rig I contacted Valve about the issue, and the couple of apps that did not work, they fixed with a patch...to the STEAM client.

Likewise, I do this every week for reviews, benching boards using STEAM, with no internet acccess. Need access to activate the copy of STEAM I image onto the drive, but that's it. Every week I do this...
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#58
GSquadron
Best candidate for them would be 3ds max program
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#59
MilkyWay
TheMailMan78See that's the thing, depending on the software we might have to. There are a few games that have to be activated on Steam to play. Call of Duty is one of them. Then what happens when I lose internet connection and can't connect to Steam to get into Photoshop? No work that day?

It seems far fetched now but its entirely possiable.
Isn't that what Steams offline mode is for?
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#60
D007
TheMailMan78I wonder what programs.
Oh yea, the new "SYL" DRM, you haven't heard of it?
Steal your life... Yea.
Idk, I'm a bit wary of steam getting too big and more importantly, too intrusive.
The software already gets more and more bloated every update.

More software, more problems.. That is the way of things.
We'll see I guess..
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