Valve Software, the company behind such popular games as Half-Life and Team Fortress, plans to start distributing other, non-gaming, software applications on its Steam software delivery service, according to a company blog post.
It will start taking submissions of software titles Sept. 5 via its Steam Greenlight site.
The company, which claims 40 million users of its PC and Mac games, is not to be taken lightly. As Forbes reported in March: “Privately held Valve has dominated the digital sales channel [for games] since 2003. Its Steam service started as a distribution mechanism for its own games; lack of competition allowed it to seize as much as 70 percent of the market.”
According to the Steam blog:
“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.”
When it comes to broadly used productivity software, Valve will face a ton of competition. Microsoft already fields an online store and is building access to new Office and SharePoint stores right into the next releases of those widely used business packages.
In the post Mark Richardson, a Valve business development exec, said the company’s user base is interested in more than games. “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.”
