Productivity and Creativity Software Coming To Steam 194
lga writes "Valve announced today in a press release that they are expanding Steam beyond games and will start to deliver other software. This means that Steam will compete directly with Microsoft's Windows Store and perhaps explains some of Gabe Newell's disdain for Windows 8. The ability to save documents to Steam Cloud space also brings Valve into competition with the likes of Dropbox and Skydrive. According to the press release, '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.'"
MS In-OS Store (Score:0, Insightful)
The problem is that Microsoft is basically screwing over everyone who has a popular application or game digital store, the same way Apple screwed over the growl team by implementing that in-OS and the Instapaper guy by including that functionality in the OS. They basically are undermining an entire eco-system that already exists (and, in fact, one which in turn actually supports the entire OS's existence, such as the 30 million gamers who may largely only use Windows because that's what is required to play their Steam games on).
Great! (Score:5, Insightful)
Single Point of Failure (Score:5, Insightful)
Valve has, numerous times, banned users from Steam for violating policies (such as cheating). When only games are affected this is draconian, but understandable. However, what about when your kid cheats, and that gets your copy of Office taken away? All the documents you created?
This is something that will have to be addressed in the TOS before I would be comfortable putting too much in their care.
I should note the same issue affects Google... this is not unique to Steam.
Re:Single Point of Failure (Score:3, Insightful)
Valve has, numerous times, banned users from Steam for violating policies (such as cheating). When only games are affected this is draconian, but understandable. However, what about when your kid cheats, and that gets your copy of Office taken away? All the documents you created?
This is something that will have to be addressed in the TOS before I would be comfortable putting too much in their care.
I should note the same issue affects Google... this is not unique to Steam.
Wow so let's see now. If I pay for software and do it legitimately then I am beholden to some single vendor who could take everything away from me that I paid for, tell me how it's all allowed in the ToS, and I'd go bankrupt trying to sue them in court before I ever got close to a verdict that would probably not be in my favor anyway. ... or ... I can go to the Pirate Bay and make a couple of quick downloads and have the assurance that I can do anything I want with it and use it any way I want and never have any such problems. Hmm... Gee that's a toughie.
Just another example of the pirates having a better, more functional, more flexible, less restricted, more secure experience than the paying customers.
You want to put a serious dent in piracy, first change that. Treat paying customers like you actually value their business. Until then...
Re:Single Point of Failure (Score:5, Insightful)
This may be in the ToS, but it is not a practical requirement. Most parents would not want to buy 3 copies of a game for ONE COMPUTER just so their kids could play too.
Re:MS In-OS Store (Score:4, Insightful)
I think he means with the windows 8 store. Valve is desperately (not necessarily correctly) trying to find something to keep them alive when the windows 8 app store rolls around. They are thinking (possibly completely wrongly) that people won't want to use steam when there's an official MS store.
I suspect they're wrong though, I suspect that the windows store will end up full of crap, including apps for webpages and that nonsense, and valve can own a chunk of the premium store market for windows (and linux).
Re:Great! (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course, it'll be a first-person image editing application.
Single pixels gets done by your 9mm, spray effects gets done by the mp5 or shotgun while the gravity gun with various implements takes care of cutting, filling etc. Wanna fill? Take a barrel of the stuff. Of course you'll get your obligatory Portal Device to for managing layers/navigation, etc etc.
Sounds a lot more exciting than Photoshop to me.
Don't underestimate Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't underestimate the energy that Microsoft will put behind squashing the competition once they roll out their own product.
They will put every single effort they can trying to kick Steam out of the business.
Yup, probably that the official MS store will be crap. But Microsoft has an history of successfully managing to destroy competition by bundling inferior products (As an example: real-time compression almost died during the Stacker vs. Doublespace saga).
Valve is completely right in attempting to get prepared for the worst.
Re:Single Point of Failure (Score:2, Insightful)
My view is similar but opposite: I get distressed that I can't play game 1 on PC 1 and at the same time play game 2 on PC 2.
I've bought both games, and I've been multi-gaming since the early 90s. Steam sadly doesn't allow this.
It's a shit system, and an unnecessary artificial constraint on games that I've purchased. Fortunately much of what Steam does is good and I'm less likely these days to be at two game-capable PCs at the same time.
However, introduce non-gaming software and it's going to become bloody stupid. Can't work on PC 1 because you have a document open on PC 2? Maybe this'll finally end that ludicrous Steam constraint.