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Productivity and Creativity Software Coming To Steam
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.'"
Just do it after you create and release Half-Life 3.
Their focus on Linux suddenly starts looking differently ...
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.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
I hope that you can install the applications anywhere instead of only under the Steam directory without having to resort to symlinks like you do now if you want to split up your SteamApps directory to different locations.
Please agree to the new Terms of Service of you will not be able to access your Steam Cloud locker, play your single player games, use any of your productivity software or turn your computer on again (Steam Linux version only).
captcha: deliver
If they come out with an operating system to compete with Windows and other windowed environments, it had better be 3d and run on the steam engine. The whole desktop ought to be a virtual 3D desktop, and all office productivity can now be done via gaming joystick. That might be awesome.
Ok, except the service and the cloud space and the applications etc. are being provided by Valve through the Steam platform. Microsoft didn't do anything but say "yes we think Windows is better with this". Any gripe you have about the way it works or what effects it will have should be directed at Valve.
I know you love to hate MS. I don't like 'em either so I don't use Windows (nothing to bitch and moan about is a good thing!). But this just can't be so hard to understand.
So Steam is going from being a games repository to being a general repo. Halfway to a Linux distribution of their own.
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 point where I assume if there is no Debian package of a cool piece of software its because its not DFSG free, for example the dropbox client might actually be DFSG-free but since I can't apt-get install it I assume its not DFSG-free. If it were, it would already be in Debian, or at least in non-free.
You know what I'd like to pay someone (a very small amount) to do for me? package emc2 for Debian. There's a binary ubuntu install but emc2 is a dependency nightmare (very specific versions of real time linux kernel extensions? seriously?). My milling machine would thank you. I've got a dozen or so linux boxes at home (more if you count images) and one lonely ubuntu box running my mill. A monoculture mught be a security headache but its a sysadmins dream...
Some other non dfsg linux software includes the microsoft fonts, acrobat pdf reader or whatever its called, maybe some other things.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
... 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.
-- the cake is a lie
You gotta love that name.
Why ruin such a good thing with boring applications that are not games?
Come on! Next thing you know I'll be forced to see Corel Draw! next to Skyrim in the store screen - I don't think anyone wants that.
I should have said in the summary that this all starts on the 5th of September.
A latent existence
I'm not sure what to think of this- by becoming a direct competitor to the Windows 8 app store, isn't Steam losing its differentiation as a specialty store for games? This might end up hurting them in the long run.
I like the sound of this initially. One drawback to current App stores is they are locked to a single platform (ie. OS). Apple's App store only works on Apple devices. Android's various marketplaces only work on Android devices. the Windows App store apps will work only on Windows devices.
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.
Funtime Candy Wow! - my plan for eventually conquering Japan.
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).
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".
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.
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.
automatic updating - most software does this.
ability to save your work to your personal Steam Cloud space so your files may travel with you - I've got a fucking laptop with a hard disk dammit.
I hate saying this but you've got to be very lazy or stupid to trust one of these services.
I'm having trouble thinking of a proprietary piece of software I need... depends on your hobbies I suppose.
Apart from games, 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 license) 6502 assembly language development toolchain called ca65, but it's not in Debian (and thus not in Ubuntu) because it's bundled with a non-free C compiler called cc65. I filed a needs-packaging request for ca65 years ago.
If you think photomanipulation is not a game, then you don't hang out on Cracked's Pointless Waste of Time, Something Awful, or Worth1000.
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.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
From a geek's standpoint, Steam is probably the best "ecosystem" out there but I find that every company these days wants to get into the cloud-based ecosystem business and I'm tired of it. The last thing on earth I want to do is store my documents in the cloud, in fact last week I completed migrating off of google's infrustructure - the headaches weren't worth the loss of convenience and lack of peace of mind. I love Steam and I just won't buy a PC game anywhere else if I can find it on Steam, but I'm fed up with cloud based storage offerings and productivity apps - there are better options out there for the techically inclined.
Stema may be one of the better game services but you still don't *really* own all your games and can lose everything by them taking it away, going out of business or someone hacking your account.
Why can't people just sell software that's not locked into their own product?
The idea of Valve expanding creates more competition which is great. However, I don't trust the cloud or any 'account' to store my files on. Maybe if it were marketed as a backup and sync instead of storage I'd be more comfortable with it. Owning a few trivial digital pieces of software is my limit of trust no matter what company. I can see Valve prepping to expand, taking the competition by surprise and by next year will have their own tablet, linux based OS, music store... So where 'should' Valve be headed? Have they lost focus or is it just what's good for business?
The complaint isn't Steam startup time, it's the startup time of the individual programs that are launched from Steam. (When it sits there for a few seconds going "Preparing to launch Portal" or whatever, and you want to tell it what's with all the preparing and to stop preparing and just go. :-))
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 app for their own store as well as a traditional version. the metro version would on a system restore reinstall all of your programs probably the win 32/64 apps as well.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
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!
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.
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 as I often may have multiple things going on at once (say playing a game while something is rendering, etc)
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 Steam. Fortunately I was able to play it before I bought it because it didn't turn out to be any good after all.
Steam covers my PC gaming needs. I really don't see myself suddenly deciding I'm only going to buy games from Microsoft, especially since the only time I think of "games" and "Microsoft" in the same context is whenever I get angry at how horrible Windows Live for Games is. Every time I go to play a game and see "Games for Windows Live" my stomach sinks because I know it's going to be an extra layer of hassle, such as Arkham City.
If somebody gives me a choice between MS and Steam, I'll pick Steam 10 times out of 10. If Microsoft decides I can't have that choice, I'll go to whichever platform supports Steam. Hell, the only reason I use Windows at all is to play PC games. If those games move to a different platform, so will I.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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 user perspective.
And ya, steam has everything except blizzard and EA's top tier games, and a few MMO's (because if you're an MMO maker steam is really not something you want to be on if you can avoid it). I see them as continuing to be the premium game and online service provider. I wouldn't be surprised if they lose out on their indie business largely - but even there they can pick up the premium versions.
It will be interesting to see if Microsoft bans bundling steam into games on the windows store. Gamersgate did that for a while, but had to give up on that plan.
To call Microsoft's app store "new tech" is extremely generous.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I can't wait for the summer windowscon where I can pick up every MS title for 29.99.
Maybe not.
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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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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 rolls out a Steam client for Linux, then any distribution which doesn't support it will be relegated to an even smaller niche than it is now. This means that Valve pretty much gets to say what Linux on the desktop is. Less fragmentation. And while some people think Valve will make a "Steambox" console (and who knows, they might), I think it's more likely they will make a "blessed" list of supported and tested hardware. This list will become a reference for anyone who wants to use Linux on the desktop. Valve also has the muscle to push for additional hardware support, while the existing open-source community might simply be ignored.
Regarding commercial software, you're obviously not going to see MS Office there (and this is a major stumbling block) but you might see some other big players. If Adobe brings Photoshop and the rest of Creative Suite to Steam, Microsoft is going to shit a brick.
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.
I think it's a rational direction for expansion to be honest. I don't think you even have to look at it as trying to compete against anything. Steam is great because it lets you install your games on any machine you want, without worrying about finding discs and typing in license keys (well, most of the time..). To be able to do that with other software would be a nice addition. It would be like having a package manager, but for paid-for software.
which is totally what she said
And ya, steam has everything except blizzard and EA's top tier games, and a few MMO's (because if you're an MMO maker steam is really not something you want to be on if you can avoid it).
That and for the larger MMOs, most of the ones not on Steam are by Blizzard and EA... Square-Enix, Sony Online Entertainment, Turbine, and CCP (makers of EVE Online) all have their MMOs on Steam.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
It will be interesting to see if Microsoft bans bundling steam into games on the windows store.
I may be wrong, but I thought that Microsoft only wanted "Metro-style" apps distributed via the Windows Store. If that's the case, then yes, they'd effectively be banning bundling Steam (or at least, Steam wouldn't be able to distribute the app)
I had a sig once. It was lost in the great storm of '09.
The complaint isn't Steam startup time, it's the startup time of the individual programs that are launched from Steam.
What Steam is doing is checking the central server to see whether you actually own the game as well as checking if there are any updates to it. The latter is necessary for certain multiplayer games that update a lot as Steam doesn't always immediately pick up that there are updates to them if they were updated after Steam was started. This is most noticeable with Team Fortress 2 but also Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, Day of Defeat: Source, and Counter-Strike: Source as they all use the same game engine (CS:S's updates are delayed, though). Likely CS:GO and DOTA2 also have this problem as both are still in beta testing with CS:GO launching in 12 days.
Running the game in offline mode should make that screen a lot shorter, but also disables achievements.
(When it sits there for a few seconds going "Preparing to launch Portal" or whatever, and you want to tell it what's with all the preparing and to stop preparing and just go. :-))
Unfortunately, the Internet doesn't run at Ludicrous Speed.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Stream may have lost thousands of customers because of the forced agreement. They lost me for sure since i didn't agree i am unable to play the games i paid for which i don't think will stand legally. I may choose Gamestop over MS because of the volume of games they already have.
Jack of all trades,master of none
Unless you count Firefox as proprietary and non-free. I guess you could.
Mozilla Firefox is source-identical to a free application. For the purpose of this discussion, I'm ignoring the "iceweasel" bickering and calling it free until the moment you install a non-free content-type handler such as Flash Player with Adobe DRM or Silverlight with Microsoft DRM, after which point the combination is non-free.
Flash and Silverlight [are] technologies I have installed rather than media streaming applications.
When you combine a free browser, a non-free content-type handler within the free browser, and a web application, the result is a non-free media streaming application in the sense to which I was referring.
Maybe the growl team did get screwed by the fact that the OS suddenly included the feature, but would you prefer to have an OS lacking features just so some third party can continue to implement it their own way? AFAIK, OS X was the only user-friendly OS that didn't have any notification system out-of-the-box. The only other one that didn't were the sort of OS that don't have an email client or browser out-of-the-box (ie: gentoo, debian, bsds).
Steam is good, but it's not great. How about allowing me to put my games in more than one category? How about allowing me to list my games that support co-op or multiplayer? The data is already in the Steam store database.
It doesn't seem to have changed their peak concurrent users any. They might have lost marginal customers, but they seem to have retained their core base.
At least not when you're measuring user numbers in the ~4-5 million range. Whether it cost 100k users here or there is hard to tell.
The old users aren't going to run away.
New users: that's another question.
If Win8 app store suck badly compared to steam (in a "microsoft compressed folders" vs. WinRAR / 7Zip way, cf the other replies in this thread). Consumer are just going to install steam for anything else than fetching microsoft software. (Probably fetching Steam from Win8 app store, and then getting their games from Steam).
If Win8 app store is compelling enough: good choice of games, good integration with other community service, with Microsoft Live Messenging services, with Microsoft's recently acquired Skype, with their older infrastructures like XBox Live and Windows Games, etc.
Well new comers won't have much incentive to try to find other distribution channels, they will be attracted by the ads and nags displayed in Windows 8 and just click in the app store to get what they need.
If microsoft lands a deal with the next über-successful AAA-title and it lands in their app store, lots of gamers will flock to get it from there, and then will use the infrastructure around Win8 to play.
Just as a recent example on both side: take Internet Explorer:
- Some time it has been "the internet icon that is good enough, why bother with anything else ?" that almost crushed non-microsoft browsers for ever.
- Some other times it has become "the blue thing on which I click to go get and install Firefox or Google Chrome on any new machine".
Depending on how Microsoft manage it, Steam vs. Win8 app store could go both ways too.
The networking effect is less strong in gaming infrastructure than on social network.
in social network, what matters most is the interaction with absolutely everyone else, no matter what the short term events. Thus the huge inertia before moving to something else. A whole generation is bound to some social platform. FB is poised to stay where it is, despite it blunders, until the current generation on it grows older and thus current kids grow up with what they are use to. (Twitter and Tumblr seem to be the next trend).
in games, what matters the most is the microcosm around the currently popular games. the rest of the social network is ancillary to that. all it takes is a new crop of successful AAA-title to get released on a new platform. You don't log into steam to communicate with your long lost cousin. You log into steam to play games. If your current games and other games with whom you can multi-player are on a different network, you log into that and promptly forget about steam... until Half-Life episode 3 or something similarily popular ends up there. In which case the cycle can start over.
The best for the long term of the platform would be to have a few concurrent channels each specializing in their own offering (exactly the current situation with Linux distribution, where you have the distro's official repository, and then 3rd party repositories to get extra or newer software: Ubuntu and PPA, openSuse and Packman + SuseBuilder, etc.) (one could imagine win 8 app store, steam and a google repository (with firefox, chrome, libreoffice, etc. in it) living together and all interfacing nicely with the upgrade system. Such a perfect situation would completely remove the bad habit of end users install any crap they find on the internet. And thus bring into the Windows world part of the reasons which make every single other system - including Linux - much more secure).
Sadly, history has shown that Microsoft rarely plays nicely with concurrence (unless ordered by an EU court), and it's very likely that they would try to go the Apple iGizmo route and could try to do anything they can legally (or without being caught) to make sure Win8 App store is the absolute inevitable stop to fetch anything you would want to run on Windows.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I agree with you that *probably* the Win8 App Store will utterly suck as a game distribution channel.
But that probably won't stop Microsoft in trying anyway.
That won't prevent them in doing some (limited harm) anyway.
And Valve wouldn't be right to base their strategy just on hunch.
They are preparing a "Plan B" just to be safe and Linux (and a potential Steam Box down the line) seem to be their current bet.
In any case Microsoft has already several cards to play:
- They will need a half baked Win8 App Store for their own software anyway. (Just like Apple distributes OS-X software on their app store)
- They already have some eco system with XBox Live, although expensive, as you mention.
- They did have some attempts with Games for Windows as you mention, although as other point out, not much people have actually heard about it even if it has been available.
- They have some user gathering/meeting potential with their messaging software:
-- Windows Live Messenger (formely MSN)
-- Skype that they acquired recently.
-- Their half baked social network that they built around Windows Live.
If they had some genius on they payroll (Hey, are we sure that Steve Jobs is indeed dead? And not simply abducted to get his brain stolen and locked into a Jar somewhere deep in Microsoft's R&D department) they could manage to leverage all this and bring something which isn't as puke-ugly-bad as usually.
On the other hand Valve hasn't much to lose:
- They have a deep warchest and working on Linux ports isn't taxing them much.
- There are benefits from developing cross-platform (like discovering crazy/rare bugs or performance problems). Thanks to the work on Linux, according to some benchmarks, the Linux version of L4D2 is bat-shit crazy fast, the Windows version running on the OpenGL backend saw some performance improvement and is currently better than the DirectX backend, although not as fast as on Linux, and the DirectX version saw some minimal improvement thanks to some of the indirect optimisations.
- By releasing a Linux version, they not only gain a (rather) small market, but also attract a lot of publicity, which is also nice (and this is basically what Id has been doing for a while. They didn't earn a lot of money directly with the Linux version, but they were popular).
- By collaborating with upstream and hardware vendors, Valve can benefit *to* the Linux community, which is both a nice publicity stunt but also is positive in some more long term utopia. (Gabe is currently completely sold on Linux ideologies according to recent interviews)
- A Linux port paves the way for some Steam-Box a few years down the line.
So even if Win8 App Store utterly bombs as a game distribution channel they still can have lots of advantage by staying prepared with a Linux release. It won't be a total waste of resource.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]