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.'"
Great! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Great! (Score:5, Funny)
Half-Life 3 has been re-imagined as a suite of image editing software rather than a first-person single player action game, and will ship with this release.
Re:Great! (Score:5, Funny)
I see that they're following the example of Master of Orion III, which instead of creating a sequel, they released some tax software with an alien interface.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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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.
Interesting ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Their focus on Linux suddenly starts looking differently ...
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And if they start to move into streaming apps/games through steam, the OS you're using will be irrelevant.
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.
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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 ha
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I am not aware of a single instance of someone being banned from Steam for cheating. Banned from VAC servers, yes, multiplayer in certain games, yes, but not from Steam in general. Now, users have gotten banned for things like trying to activate a hacked game or phishing, but I've never heard of an account ban for cheating or other minor offenses.
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They also get banned for credit card charge backs.
Really? Unless something dramatic has changed in the landscape recently, making any attempt to stop a credit card user doing a chargeback if they have legitimate grounds to do so is usually a good way to get your organisation banned by the ubergods of the credit card world for violating their own terms, which are about as fair and balanced for merchants as Valve's own heavily one-sided terms would be to users if they ever actually did what the lawyers have claimed they can in those terms. I don't for a mome
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What?! You have something really confused.
1. Yes, you can't say, "you agree to never file a chargeback".. that is true. That's against the rules.
2. But if you file a chargeback, there's nothing in the rules that says the company must continue doing business with that person. In fact, they encourage you to maintain a ban list so that you do not process charges from high-risk customers.
Besides, if you file a chargeback and win, then the service was never paid for. So why are you using it?
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In which case it also prevents you redeeming codes for products bought at retail. They'd be on the receiving end of a lawsuit so fast if they told me I can't redeem my purchased Photoshop key because I charged back a broken product which they refused to refund (as is my legal right).
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Agreed 100%. In fact, I find the notion of banning an entire account absolutely vile. Banning users at all is vile. Protect the non-cheating population, sure, but cheaters paid for the damned game/app, let them use it. Cheating has been a part of gaming since the dawn of home computing. They should deal with it far more gracefully, like segregating cheaters to play against each other in a separate lobby (can't remember the company that did that). Even with MMOs, they could shift cheaters to a differen
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Users don't get banned for cheating, you don't lose access to your account or games, you are simply banned from servers that use valves cheat protection.
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Depends on the network. On Steam, yes they're fairly respectful about it. VAC only bans you from other VAC servers and that's mostly fine. Every other delivery platform I know of simply locks your account, so you can't even play solo games anymore. I would love to be educated otherwise on this, but it has been the major reason why I have a Steam account and nothing else.
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I should note the same issue affects Google... this is not unique to Steam.
I have local copies of all my google docs, thanks to google drive. And they're backed up (using time machine), so even if google nuked 'em before removing access, I'd still have copies.
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I hate to break it to you, but Google Drive doesn't actually copy the docs down to your machine; the files you see are just metadata that references the file in Google Docs.
When it comes to syncing Google Docs office files, the Google Drive software only downloads a link to your documents and spreadsheets. Click on one to open it and you're taken to the browser to edit the online version. If you're offline, you're out of luck. The actual file isn't downloaded to your computer, so it's useless as an offline backup option.
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/computers/blogs/gadgets-on-the-go/hands-on-google-drive-20120429-1xsun.html [smh.com.au]
Files created in Google Docs get their own file type â" .gdoc and .gsheet, though these aren't true local copies of the files. Instead they're links that open files in Google Docs, making them useless when you're offline.
http://www.zdnet.com/google-drive-4010026028/ [zdnet.com]
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I hate to break it to you, but Google Drive doesn't actually copy the docs down to your machine; the files you see are just metadata that references the file in Google Docs.
Only if you don't set up offline access. [google.com]
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Offline access stores the files in Chrome (probably in Local Storage), not in the Drive directory.
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Offline access stores the files in Chrome (probably in Local Storage), not in the Drive directory.
Yes, but my post was in response to this:
I hate to break it to you, but Google Drive doesn't actually copy the docs down to your machine
If you enable offline access the files are copied to your machine.
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Not all of them, and only if he uses Chrome, which we don't know if he does, and only if he enables Offline, which he probably hadn't.
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I hate to break it to you, but Google Drive doesn't actually copy the docs down to your machine; the files you see are just metadata that references the file in Google Docs.
Ugh. Silly me - since files I drop in there are mirrored on gdrive, I assumed that the documents they dropped there work the same way.
There are plenty of ways to get data out of google, of course, but it's good to know that the way I thought it was happening is not. I'll have to look into something a little less automagical...
Thanks for pointing out my error.
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When Valve bans you for cheating, your account isn't taken away. Your ability to play on VAC secured multiplayer servers is disabled. Sometimes it's only for the one specific game, too. So you wouldn't have your copy of Office taken for your child being banned for cheating.
In order to get your account shut down, they would need to do something particularly bad, like defrauding another user.
Not to say I agree with what Valve is doing. I really think this is a stupid idea. The idea of Steam being a general pu
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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.
Too greedy to implement screen sharing (Score:3)
Most parents would not want to buy 3 copies of a game for ONE COMPUTER just so their kids could play too.
On the other hand, my aunt already bought two copies of a Mojang title so that two of her kids could play together. It's too bad most PC game developers are too greedy to implement spawn installation or screen sharing [cracked.com].
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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 s
Install locations (Score:5, Interesting)
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And along with that, fix whatever causes the steam apps folder to be marked as "all changed" from Time Machine's perspective every time you open Steam on OS X, causing unnecessary multi-gig backups. I had to exclude the steam apps folder for this reason. It can't be subtly changing every file?
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I configured time machine to ignore that directory entirely. If you even run into a situation where you have to restore, you don't need Time Machine to do that for you. You can just pull everything back via Steam anyway.
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Do you have any idea what that would cost? Restoring my SteamApps folder from Steam itself would cost me no less than $500 in bandwidth alone.
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And that's still Ok, because Steam syncs the save games with their servers. I just rebuilt my machine from scratch last week, and once I got everything back on, it's as if nothing had happened.
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And along with that, fix whatever causes the steam apps folder to be marked as "all changed" from Time Machine's perspective every time you open Steam on OS X, causing unnecessary multi-gig backups. I had to exclude the steam apps folder for this reason. It can't be subtly changing every file?
What makes you so sure it can't be? Part of Steam's copy protection is encrypted executables, so what makes you certain that it isn't encrypting them with a different key each time the app starts, or decrypting them again or something?
Run locations (Score:2)
Also, when you're able to run them anywhere.
Steam needs to separate accounts from app instances. For example, I should be able to run Photoshop or Maya from computer "A" while my game is running on computer "B", despite them being on the same account. What should be blocked is running a copy of the same application simultaneously on computer "A" and "B".
At the moment, instance permission is account-level, rather than application-level. If they want to bring in non-games, that would be a deal-breaker for me
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Thanks for articulating a point I made elsewhere in this thread rather more eloquently than I managed.
Assuming people use a single PC is a naive and archaic assumption. I can't even support it as an anti-piracy facility as I should be able to loan games to friends - I have a dozen game CDs out of my house right now..
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Offline mode should cover this to a fair extent. It will just make cloud access difficult, but you could work around it.
SteamOS ? (Score:2)
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Oooooooh no. Last time someone did that, some twerp came around, shouted "I know this! It's UNIX!", and undid months of important secret work!
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For what it's worth, that actually WAS Unix.
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Thats the role of the OS. This idea that the OS has games, the OS has internet browsers, the OS has paintbrush or gimp or open office or microsoft office is all kinda silly
Once their mind is cleansed of that falsehood, you get to do it all over again with "desktop environments" like kde, gnome, xfce.
why can't we just have xterm, or maybe xterm-version1356+++ and 30 other xterms, instead of afterstep's aterm, elightenments eterm, gnome's gnome-terminal, KDE's konsole, gnustep's terminal.app, xfce's xfce4-terminal
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Once their mind is cleansed of that falsehood, you get to do it all over again with "desktop environments" like kde, gnome, xfce.
And after that, they shove everything into web browsers.
why can't we just have xterm
No one is forcing you to use or install any other terminal. Personally I prefer urxvt, small and fast and highly configurable.
Steam Linux (Score:2)
non dfsg linux stuff? (Score:2)
expanding Steam beyond games and will start to deliver other software
On linux?
This means that Steam will compete directly with
apt-get install whatever
I'm having trouble thinking of a proprietary piece of software I need... depends on your hobbies I suppose.
One service they could provide is distributing stuff thats "free" in quotes but not really free. I have not checked lately but I though ye olde heekscad was not quite DFSG (would be glad to hear I'm wrong) and I'm almost certain that xylinx fpga software is "free" but not DFSG-free so thats why there's no simple apt-get solution to install those monsters. Its at the p
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I doubt you're in their target market.
Video on demand and 1040 other things (Score:2)
I'm having trouble thinking of a proprietary piece of software I need... depends on your hobbies I suppose.
Apart from games [pineight.com], a lot of people need proprietary video player software to stream rented non-free films and non-free TV shows. The software is non-free due to compliance and robustness rules imposed by the movie studios. And a lot of people need proprietary tax preparation wizard software to prepare income tax returns. This software is non-free because tax software publishers treat their machine-readable interpretations of annual tax law amendments as a valuable trade secret.
Its at the point where I assume if there is no Debian package of a cool piece of software its because its not DFSG free
There is a DFSG-free (zlib lic
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a lot of people need proprietary video player software to stream rented non-free films and non-free TV shows. The software is non-free due to compliance and robustness rules imposed by the movie studios.
Which is interesting. I can stream live football from my preferred club's site (which requires paid subscription), I can stream live sport, movies and other TV programmes from my satellite TV provider's website and I can stream a whole ton of shit from the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 all without having to install any applications I didn't already have on my PC.
Unless you count Firefox as proprietary and non-free. I guess you could. Some people would include Flash and Silverlight too, but they're technologies I h
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You know what I'd like to pay someone (a very small amount) to do for me? package emc2 for Debian.
Sounds like it would take a real Einstein to do that.
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"On linux?"
Yes. Games, for one thing. Valve is building their games for a linux distribution.
"apt-get install whatever"
Does that pull down your data? history? save games? do it automatically?
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I'm having trouble thinking of a proprietary piece of software I need
Excluding games, I only have a couple myself - the software that came with my satellite HD tv decoder, and Adobe Lightroom.
There is however a massive market out there for desktop applications, and several for which there just aren't capable Free alternatives (such as, indeed, Adobe Lightroom).
I am not sure steam is ready for non-games... (Score:4, Interesting)
... software just based on how long it takes to launch things. If I want to play something it's not a big deal to wait the 10-20 seconds it takes to launch steam and waiting for it to connect to my account to allow the game to launch, but if I have some software I need to use for work and/or open/close several times that would get pretty annoying.
This said the steam advantages (and the inevitable steam sales) might make it more likely that people would overlook the speed issues, I am not sure.
Re:I am not sure steam is ready for non-games... (Score:5, Funny)
Don't forget the achievements!
It will be awesome when Photoshop gets achievements.
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Ding! You just opened a file! 40 Achievement Points!
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I'm more interested in Photoshop getting co-op multiplayer.
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You laugh, but achievements are great motivators.
I predict everything will have an achievement system eventually.
I also predict when smart phones are more aware of their surroundings, personal achievement will become popular.
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unless of course you don't have a gambler personality type.. then they're just annoying, pointless filler.
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Microsoft [msdn.com] beat them to it.
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Obligatory penny-arcade: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/08/22/ [penny-arcade.com]
Steam Cloud (Score:5, Funny)
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Starting 05/09/2012 (Score:5, Informative)
I should have said in the summary that this all starts on the 5th of September.
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Oops...that should read 9/5/12.
May was three months ago!
I'm in the UK.
Losing focus (Score:2)
An Multi-Platform App Store (Score:3)
Here Steam has the chance to let the same apps work on any OS you want as long as the app developers will support it. Login to your Steam account anywhere and install that must-have-software on any machine no matter where you are or what you have. And if your application can be easily distributed through one channel to all your users, so much the better for you! I hope Steam finds success here.
Danger will! (Score:5, Informative)
So, out of curiosity I decided to disagree to the last update to Steam EULA - you will lose *all* access, not just future updates, but everything you have or had with steam will be blocked unless you agree to their terms. Note, their terms and conditions specifically calls for a 30 days heads up for you to save your stuff, this is nice and all, except you don't get 30 days warning and you sure as hell don't get to access your offline items.
And they want us to trust them with our files?
Oh, and their support response to inquiries with regards to the illegal blockage of my applications. "We believe this update to terms and conditions are in your best interest".
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Note, their terms and conditions specifically calls for a 30 days heads up for you to save your stuff, this is nice and all, except you don't get 30 days warning
Sorry, I could not understand this statement. I am not a Steam user (never have been), so maybe there's some context that makes this seemingly nonsensical sentence... sensible.
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You do realize that there are other ways to get software on your computer than "Steam", right? Just wondering because you sound like you believe that "Steam" and "piracy" are your only two options.
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Because it is! At least it is when you're looking for reasons to justify pirating everything.
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You do realize that there are other ways to get software on your computer than "Steam", right?
I'm sure he does.
Just wondering because you sound like you believe that "Steam" and "piracy" are your only two options.
Why would anyone explore any option other than piracy after they already paid for the game on steam?
Oh... you mean "new games that he doesn't already have..." sure, for that looking at alternatives is reasonable. But if I've got 100 titles on steam, and they up and change the EULA on me and hold e
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Not always true. If you purchase a Steamworks product (such as Skyrim) in stores, it cannot be played without the use of the Steam application and agreeing to their draconian terms.
Never will I use this for productivity apps (Score:2)
I would never use a system like this for business or produtivity (that includes all cloud crap like Office 365, Google Docs etc as well). The motivation is purely to stone-wall other app stores off (such as the Windows App Store) and take as much market share and control as possible rather than to provide a fair and reasonable service.
The moment you're a customer, they don't care about you as you're locked in. Also the motivations - sorry but:
easy installation - it's not hard to install anything.
automati
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automatic updating - most software does this.
Java on windows. i have to go clean computers regularly and remove old java installs and then install the new java. not all software updates as nicely as linux it dose on linux
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For many people, it is hard to find and install stuff; more importantly, it's very hard to know what software you can trust not to copy your banking password and spam your friends. Steam is setting itself up as another "garden" just like the App Stores of mobile.
As for automatic updating, that's a bonus for the developer, not so much the user, 'though I do get annoyed that every single Windows application has its own updater. A centralized system like Apt (or in this case, Steam) is so much nicer.
As for the
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Windows+Office (possibly +browser) are the only "big" software people need, but then they install dozens or hundreds of small applications from the web; it's how they get viruses and fill IE with toolbars. It's true that now "webapps" are making those less relevant, but there's still plenty of them.
For the majority of users, they already have that through Windows Update/Microsoft Update which takes care of their PC, antivirus and Office quite happily.
See above; there's plenty those don't update.
Apt is great when you're offline isn't it - I assume you have 73 CDs or 11 DVDs on you all the time.
I have no idea what's your point. Why would I expect Apt to update my software when I'm offline?
I don't care if my disk dies. I have backups and a spare laptop (Lenovo T61's are cheap as chips). Windows 7 whinges at you persistently if you don't set up a regular backup routine so there is no excuse! You plug a USB stick in and it deals with it for you. Laziness or ignorance is not an excuse.
Sigh. What is and isn't an "excuse" is completely irrelevant to whether
No thanks (Score:2)
Why can't people just sell software that's not locked into their own product?
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I get your concern, but:
1) I get title pretty damn cheap.
2) not likely to go out of business
3) I can turn off the connection.
4) Steam taking away things will shoot them in the foot, so that isn't likely except for abuse.
5) Steam handles 'hacked' accounts pretty well.
6) Going out of business? it's not like a judge would let them turn off everyone's games.
Of course, all that data is just used to create risk analysis. So in regards to games, my risk is very low, and the cost of games is cheap enough to out wa
New homework excuse! (Score:2)
Nah, I couldn't print my paper because stupid Steam failed to connect to my account, so my office program locked me out.
I'll have it tomorrow when the internet's fixed, I swear!
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Well then, since it's a sync, and you can run the programs off line, you get an F.
Nice try, ignoramus.
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You can run the programs offline if Steam feels like letting you.
Steam's 'offline mode' is not reliable. I often have it just say 'Unable to connect to server' and quit without offering offline mode.
So no, you can't necessarily 'run the programs off line'.
Which was sort of my point.
sweet (Score:2)
I can't wait for the summer windowscon where I can pick up every MS title for 29.99.
Maybe not.
Valve could make Linux on the desktop a reality (Score:2)
I've thought for years that Linux on the desktop was a dead end, but it's actually conceivable that Valve could get it to work.
Admittedly, there are still problems to be solved: the utterly horrible font rendering, the reliance on having the obsolete and slow X11 subsystem sitting behind all other graphics, the lack of a UI that matches up with Windows. But three of the major problems – fragmentation, bad hardware support, and lack of commercial software – could be addressed by Valve.
If Valve ro
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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.
You're comparing the wrong things here, Apple did that with iOS and Microsoft is doing that with Windows RT but neither have done that on their desktop operating systems (Windows 8 and OSX).
There's been enough negativity surrounding Windows 8 that i can't imagine Windows RT is going to overtake Android or iOS so i doubt there's any worry about that becoming ubiquitous.
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).
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.
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Anyway, this is valve moving into MS's area, not vice versa. I'd guess that Newell realizes that windows 8 app store is going to be a disaster and that he can position himself to r
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I've had windows live bundled with various games for a while, but yes, MS has managed to seriously screw up pretty much every attempt at an online store for consumers so far.
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The difference is that the average user can't see what previously bundled products did badly, and developers kept supporting it.
Windows 8 is different. From the moment you boot it up on a desktop you can see what's wrong with it. You try and use anything, and you can see what is wrong with it. With the app store it will probably suck at actually being an app store, you won't be able to find good apps easily (unless you know the name of what you want), and the apps themselves won't connect you to other us
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It's relevant because other than Gates you still have the same personalities running the show as you did 20 years ago. Especially Ballmer. Now maybe he's seen the Light or found Jesus or whatever but I wouldn't count on it.
It's not Ballmer and associates who have changed, it's the rest of the marketplace. Microsoft's competitors are far more numerous, powerful, and skilled than they were 10-15 years ago. Google and Apple (and apparently now Valve as well) are not going to let Microsoft steamroll over eve
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This is the part I can't understand. Why would a Microsoft App Store make it less likely people will use Steam? Is Microsoft going to have distribution deals with every game developer?
Right now, the number of games that I'd be interested in that are NOT on Steam is extremely small. In the past year, there's been only one game I wanted to check out that I couldn't buy on
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Microsoft going to have distribution deals with every developer
having had the unfortunate 'pleasure' of working with a team of people doing business with valve, valve very much builds deals with individual developers. It's basically the same deal for everyone, 30% steam cut, but they do talk to you individually, sometimes not very nicely (and sometimes deservedly so). I suspect MS will have to automate everything and not really build individual relationships. This gives them an advantage in volume, and ease from a developer perspective, but it's worse from an end u
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") trying to find something to keep them alive "
yeah, the millions from selling in game items and making very popular games will just go away.
The windows store will end up with thousand og apps for their phone and tablet almost no one uses.
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That's my point. They seem to be spending a huge pile of money, and exerting a huge effort in trying to hedge against windows 8, though I'm not convinced they're in any real risk.
Then again, the reason you invest in a hedge like that is because if you guessed wrong and didn't have a plan B you'd be out of business.
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windows store will only support WInRT style programs til cold hard reality comes up and bitch-slaps them in the face. then they will support them and screw over valve. that slap may come in the form of seeing valve rake in money, or people calling them up and screaming them out because their win32/win64 apps won't restore, or any of number of other causes or combinations of all of them. valve stands to gain a whole lot from this in until ms pulls the rug out from under them. they will probably have a metro
PaintShop Pro is a game (Score:2)
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That's not what's meant by "I'm going to go play with my PSP".
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To call Microsoft's app store "new tech" is extremely generous.
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Steams cloud is a sync.
You sound like my Luddite uncle who doesn't trust a computer to store his tax information.