A while back Valve announced that Steam would soon begin offering software titles and that they would be launching their first batch of titles on Steam on September 5th. As it turns out it was rather almost a month late—Valve is rather infamous for its delays.
The first batch of software is now available on Steam, and given the focus of the platform, even most of the software have to do with games. As a launch offer, all software are on a 10% discount.
The current list of software launched is:
- GameMaker: Studio — Game Development tool
- 3D-Coat — 3D Modelling and painting tool
- ArtRage Studio Professional — Drawing and painting tool
- 3DMark Vantage — Graphics performance / gaming benchmark software
- 3DMark11 — Graphics performance / gaming benchmark software
- CameraBag 2 — Photo editing tool
While these are all the first third party non-game software to be available on Steam, it is important to remember that the first software title on Steam is actually Valve’s own Source Filmmaker, a free tool for creating animations based on Team Fortress 2 game assets.
The software on Steam have access to all the Steam features, so like games, they are automatically downloaded and installed in one step, they can access Steam Cloud for synchronizing settings, and possibly sharing images. Software can access the Steam Workshop for sharing content. In fact software can even have achievements!
It makes very little sense, but GameMaker: Studio for example already has a number of achievements, including achievements for opening preferences etc.
Software can also have “DLCs” or more accurately in the case of software, plug-ins and modules that can be purchased.
Steam store and client both now have different sections for Software and Games, when using a software, a user’s status is displayed as “In-App”. There are still cracks in the seams though as the integration of software and Steam is still in its early stages. For one you can still see links such as “Game Hub” for software, and it still lists plug-ins / modules under the heading of “Downloadable Content for this Game” and lists them under DLC in the client. Right now it also seems like software is only available for Windows.
In any case software developers now have a new venue for selling their applications. Only time will tell how well Software works under the Steam model which requires the Steam client to be running in order to even launch software. Given the poor internet connectivity of countries such as India, it might just be too much of a pain to be forced to have an internet connection to use software.
