Valve's Steam expanding beyond games? Android app suggests so
Valve, the developers behind the Half-Life series and the gaming download platform Steam, may be looking to expand the wares of their online store beyond their traditional PC gaming output after new features in their Android app were uncovered.
Hit the Search button in the app and then tap the Genre tab, and you’ll see a further ten categories have been added alongside the usual gaming groups. These include areas such as Accounting, Photo Editing, Education and Video Publishing, amongst others.
Could Valve be preparing to offer different sorts of software through Steam? Though traditionally a gaming platform, Steam now also lets gamers distribute mods through the Steam Workshop, and is increasingly encouraging gamers to publish their own gaming videos. In this respect, supplementary software to support these tasks would make sense if sold through Steam.
The likes of Accounting and Software Training are a little more difficult to squeeze into the regular Steam mould, but with such a loyal installed user-base, it makes sense for Valve to expand to other sorts of software. The company are already looking into streamlining their software review and distribution process with Steam Greenlight, which will encourage the Steam community to vote on upcoming independent titles most worthy of distribution through the platform.
Steam is currently hosting a massive gaming sale, with substantial price cuts on dozens of AAA games. Though users were initially disappointed by a leaked list of titles that made its way to Reddit, the full list of games in the annual sale has proved wallet-purging stuff.
