Valve brings non-game software to Steam

http://www.neowin.net/news/steam-to-challenge-windows-store-by-offering-non-gaming-software

by AndrewDucker • 14 years ago

64 68 14 years ago

jiggy20114• 14 years ago

Valve are going to compete head on with Microsoft then? That's pretty ballsy. Let's hope steam is not left a smouldering corpse.

ddt3• 14 years ago

It's hard to envision this being an extinction event for Steam. Microsoft has just never been able to get people onboard in the way that Valve has with PC game distribution platforms. GFWL was/is a disaster that ended up being more trouble than it was worth. I could see Steam having to back out of software distribution, but I can't imagine Steam dying in the foreseeable future. Not with tens of millions of users voluntarily and enthusiastically locked into the platform.

jiggy20114• 14 years ago

I think users can be fickle about these things, MS just has to make sure their store tactically undercuts Valve's on some popular products and they could steal a lot of users.

MS also has a trump card here in the form of the Xbox, they can make their Windows stuff integrate with it very well for example allowing you to buy a game once and make it playable on both your PC and your Xbox, or to transfer save games between each etc. Microsoft can also demand Windows Store exclusivity for games to also appear on the Xbox.

squiggy22• 14 years ago

Agreed. Steam has been something of a trojan horse, building a huge user base in gaming before rapidly switching direction into this market. Good luck to them I say, MS alternatives are nowhere near as polished.

correctifier• 14 years ago

They really aren't even going head to head with Microsoft, since the Windows 8 app store is only for "Metro" apps and this will only be for regular Windows apps.

The real danger for Valve is that people will release games for Metro instead of Steam, this is probably them trying to hedge against that.

duaneb3• 14 years ago

It's interesting to see how this plays out. Valve + general purpose software distribution + linux ports + hardware speculation - Valve seems like the biggest proponent for general purpose, open computing these days (open in the sense of being able to do what you want with your computer). Could Valve be a valid mainstream competitor for the personal computer market? Not all computing can be done from a tablet or console.

jlgreco• 14 years ago

"Valve seems like the biggest proponent for general purpose, open computing these days (open in the sense of being able to do what you want with your computer)."

I would have never seen that coming from a company who's most important product is more or less fancy DRM system..., but I surprise myself by finding myself agreeing with you.

I'm not quite sure what that means. Maybe the DRM is more incidental that I thought, maybe they just have their heart in the right place, or maybe the state of things is just that bad.

ddt3• 14 years ago

It has to do with the way Valve has approached it. From day one it wasn't, "How do we stop people from pirating?" It was, "How do we make a more convenient service than the pirates?" And that's where they won. In the early days, people pushed back. But then the brand of Valve as people won out over the brand of Valve as the makers of Half-Life. If you make a good product that has convenience over the alternative (piracy) and charge a reasonable amount, people will pay when they used to pirate. The DRM is incidental to the experience. Valve realized it first, and now you're seeing it replicated in things like Netflix and Hulu.

mtgx• 14 years ago

Valve wants Steam to be like Kindle. It's heavily DRM'ed, but available on any platform you can imagine, and therefore you are not restricted by the OS, only by Steam.

franzus• 14 years ago

> open

yeah ... if only there wasn't that problem with valve not accepting everybody on their platform :)

duaneb3• 14 years ago

That's a good point. I just assumed that because Gabe decried the windows app store lockin for ARM he would play nice on his own platform. I'm not sure if this would be true or not.

Foy5• 14 years ago

Personally, I love Steam for the fact there there are no $0.99 fart apps or flash games.

Everything is high quality. No games on the store were purchased a thousand+ times with hacked Steam accounts just to get them to the top of the Steam store. Simply because the hacker wouldn't be able to get his shitty game onto the store in the first place.

When I browse through the Apple app store I often feel like I'm sifting through a rubbish bin for something useful I accidentally dropped in there.

james4k2• 14 years ago

Yeah, though there's something to be said about a curated store. All of the games on Steam are of a high quality. Also, Steam Greenlight [1] will make things interesting for app developers too.

[1] http://steamcommunity.com/greenlight/

prezjordan• 14 years ago

I'm really hoping for a steam redesign. I find the UI to be slow and unresponsive. Hopefully something native (on Windows, Mac, AND now Linux) comes out in the near future.

Serplat• 14 years ago

It's also extremely buggy on the Mac, at least. I can't count the number of times dropdown menus have shown up behind everything else.

rip_kirby• 14 years ago

They've been improving lately.

Use to drive me nuts when I want a quick game of Bit Trip Runner, the loading time to start up and login then go to the library might take longer than one quick stage.

jtchang• 14 years ago

This kind of got me thinking: What would it take for me to try my hand at developing a desktop app today?

I am a developer. For the most part I've been doing web applications (with a bit of mobile). This is mostly because I feel there isn't any money to be made in desktop apps. Piracy, distribution, etc. Lots of headaches.

Could this change things? Possibly. Just like Java which was download once, run everywhere (haha kidding) we could have apps that are "uniplatform" (yeah I just made up a new word). I buy the app and it is good for desktop, mobile, web. It might give slightly different experiences but my data is still all the same in the back.

One of the closest apps I can think of like this is Google Chat/Talk. I can start a conversation in a web browser window, reply using Pidgin, and finish off a conversation on my Android. It is relatively seamless.

pizza• 14 years ago

Even better; a Steam application API: write code once and it's available on any Steam-able OS. Cloud storage and desktop power and a huge userbase would make this a tasty platform.

jiggy20114• 14 years ago

They would be better off just publishing NaCl applications. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Native_Client

pooriaazimi2• 14 years ago

How would that be any different than Java?! Of course, except from the fact that Java lacked the distribution channel.

IMO, That's horrible - nightmare scenario. As a Mac user, I hate nothing more than cross-platform apps. They're ugly and lack almost all the features that makes OS X a great user operating system.

brador• 14 years ago

Yeah, that's pretty much a webapp. Key point is the backend/data is on your side and users access it using a dumb terminal (mobile, web, desktop).

Users can save a javescript webpage and run it from their desktop, but they'd still need web access to get to that data you're storing. Would you class that as a "desktop" app? Or is a desktop app just software that works offline? Or has no other front end software (like a browser) dependencies?

citricsquid• 14 years ago

What's interesting is a few weeks back Gabe said that Microsoft were doing bad things with Windows 8, I wonder if this is what got his goat? Steam (I assume) invested a lot in getting software companies on board but if Microsoft had their own app store all this work would be for nothing.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18996377

smacktoward• 14 years ago

Look closely at what you wrote, you answered your own question :-D

james4k2• 14 years ago

On the other hand, it's been clear that Windows 8 would have an app store for about a year.

http://www.technolog.msnbc.msn.com/technology/technolog/wind...

geuis• 14 years ago

Why is the comparison being made just between Steam and Microsoft's app store? MS hasn't yet launched their service and what it's uptake will be is yet to be known. Alternately, we have the Mac App Store. It's been around for a while, has a huge uptake, and many developers already have data on how successful (or not) they've been. While Macs are only ~20% of the desktop/laptop market, it's a very lucrative segment.

I would like to see a comparison with how Valve will compete or cooperate with an existing, proven desktop marketplace rather than speculation on something that hasn't launched yet.

nwmcsween• 14 years ago

I lost respect for valve after they slam windows 8 as garbage without merit and then open a direct competitor to microsoft's app store.

zevyoura• 14 years ago

I sort of understand the first point, though I don't think they did it on a whim without any "merit." I don't get your second point though, why do you lose respect for them for competing with a product MS hasn't even released?

Edit: I saw your post in the other thread where you say more clearly that you think the two are related. I'm still not sure why this is an evil thing to do, or why you're convinced the slamming was 'without merit' but it makes more sense now.

DigitalJack• 14 years ago

Steam pre-dates Microsoft's app store, Apple's app store by a large margin. It's been around for quite a while. Since 2002 I believe.

You make it sound as if they just opened it.

seabee• 14 years ago

Every other app store has games, too - with the reasonable assumption that Windows' app store would too, Microsoft established themselves as a competitor to Steam a year ago.

secoif• 14 years ago

Have you used windows 8? The preview is embarrassingly bad, garbage is being generous.

saturdaysaint• 14 years ago

I like the idea of a strong platform independent player. I like being in a position where I can switch between Mac and PC fairly painlessly - I like OSX, but sometimes I want the price/performance of a PC tower. The number of critical platform exclusive apps continues to dwindle for me, so a centralized market that minimizes lock-in sounds fantastic.

ja2ke2• 14 years ago

This will dilute the hell out of what I actually use Steam for -- video games.

The Steam front page, though it may seem a little sloppy or insane, is extremely successful at pointing me to games I am interested in, at a cheap price. It's going to get weird, and very nebulous, if a copy of Adobe Premiere is up there in the hot picks slider along with Assassin's Creed 3.

elliottcarlson• 14 years ago

It would shock me if they didn't have separate sections to account for just that. They (hopefully) aren't going to alienate the over 40 million user base they have when currently everyone is expecting to see games there. Productivity related desktop applications will not make sense to a large chunk of those users.

ja2ke2• 14 years ago

It's brand diluting all the same, though. I guess they (probably correctly) see that they are doing a lot of things right with online purchases/downloads that other places aren't, but part of what I think they are doing right is having and keeping focus. Of course, people said the same thing when Amazon stopped just selling books, and that worked out alright for them.

gddr2• 14 years ago

I hate Steam's DRM. People keep trying to convince people that it does not actually require an Internet connection and all that. Try using it for 6 months with a 0.2 Mbps connection that gets randomly cut every 5-10 seconds. It can literally take 10 minutes "Preparing to launch" a game. I really hope it doesn't expand to other software.

The funniest part is: "Could not connect to Steam network. Start in Offline Mode?". You answer yes. "Error: could not connect to Steam network. This operation cannot be completed in Offline Mode". Maximum trollgaben.

thereallurch5• 14 years ago

.2Mbps...maybe that's your real problem? DRM is here to stay, and internet drm is increasingly popular. Maybe time to upgrade your connection?

Foy5• 14 years ago

It's barely even DRM... it's more like you just have to be logged in to Steam to launch online games or games that specifically require an Internet connection.

I've started Steam in offline mode to play my singleplayer games whenever I don't have an internet connection quite often, and without issue.

But I agree, his 0.2 MB/s connection is probably the main problem there. The issue isn't with Steam's download speeds... it's with his ISP's.

emitstop• 14 years ago

I'm sure if he was capable of upgrading his connection he would. A lot of places (even in the US) are still not equipped with high speed internet. Just a couple of years ago in Washington State I was still on dial up (albiet in a fairly rural area, but still not more than 45 minutes outside Portland, OR.).

laserDinosaur• 14 years ago

"Maybe time to upgrade your connection?"

While I've no idea of the other guys situation, "suggestions" like this really boil my blood. A huge portion of people serving in the milatary, people in crappy college dorms, people working in hotels, people in rural areas, people in countries that are still building infrastructure, all these people can't just decide to get faster internet. It's elitest, rude, and completely ignores a real issue many people don't have a choice but to put up with.

gddr2• 14 years ago

Luckily I'm on a 30Mbps connection now ;-)

petitmiam2• 14 years ago

The offline mode only works well when you are online and you know you will want to use it offline next time.

If you're already offline, you're screwed. I remember once having to connect up my phone as a modem just to launch Steam so I could start it online, then switch offline.

Splines• 14 years ago

Agreed - if they want to have a hope for general application adoption they will need to loosen their DRM somewhat.

Having to use their launcher is also annoying - while it's nice to have the majority of my games in one place, none of my non-Steam games require me to launch a store application before running.

I'm interested to see what they'll do, but I would be very hesitant to buy a productivity application from them as things stand.

Dylan168074• 14 years ago

I've had steam work fine on a pretty slow connection. The only real issue I had was if the connection degraded, steam would take a long time to load because of the embedded web pages.

Otherwise in my experience .2Mbps is fine. But I'm boggled at a connection that would cut every 5-10 seconds. How could you stand trying to load images on that? What would cause that?

seanalltogether• 14 years ago

I'm still unclear how you submit an app to their store? If I have an app with a mac and pc build that I want to submit, what do I do?

Foy5• 14 years ago

I guess you could try reaching out to one of the many indie developers on Steam.

Anyhow, what I suspect though, is that Steam isn't going to become some "app store" like the current Android and Apple ones, rife with fart apps and other useless things. I suspect it would stay highly curated.

For example you don't see hundreds of amateur flash games on Steam, everything is cherry picked which makes for a great consumer experience. I know that any game I buy off Steam is going to be of high quality.

This has the added benefit of not having any of those "scammer" apps around. You know, those apps that get purchased by any and all hacked Apple accounts just to get pushed to the top of the app store.

wtracy• 14 years ago

Right at the top of the FAQ page: http://www.steampowered.com/steamworks/FAQ.php "At the moment Steam is currently not accepting new game submissions as we transition to our new Steam Greenlight process."

Previously, I believe you had to contact them and talk to a human being to start the submission process.

graylights• 14 years ago

Steam isn't just distribution but also offers a lot of features that could translate to apps:

  1. Cloud based saves could become file/settings syncing
  2. Steam Workshop for users to publish plugins and addons
  3. Friends/groups/IM, invite to MP game could become invite to teleconference.
  4. Authentication (OpenID)

But if my app has file associations and user isn't logged on to steam. When they double click the associated filetype will they have to login to steam before my app can open it?

Valve brings non-game software to Steam

Related Stories