Well I was worried that they'd stripped me of my rights to a class action suit by holding hundreds of dollars' worth of games for ransom, but wow! That totally makes up for that!
Steam Expands Library to Non-Game Software
- Thread starter Greg Tito
- Start date
I am glad I am not the only one who got that from this article. I could see Valve making Steam and integral part of their own Linux distro with it acting like Ubuntu's Software Center. I think that would actually be a good move. An idiotproof distro made by Valve specifically for gaming(with full driver support for a multitude of cards) could make Linux PC gaming dam near painless. I hate having to deal with Linux when shit goes wrong....Mr.Tea said:
PS: If valve rolls their own distro you know it will have a cool looking base GUI...
So I'll have to start up Steam client and spend 15 minutes watching it repeatedly trying and failing to download an update before I can use my text editor? Yeah - I totally want that.
Or perhaps I want to go through the aggravation of having to cancel my credit card after they leak it again. Even better.
Or perhaps I want to go through the aggravation of having to cancel my credit card after they leak it again. Even better.
I would really hope that it would be possible to turn off automatic updating on applications. An auto-update of a game renders a save file unreadable or tries to introduce a feature your video card doesn't like, well, that's a hassle. An automatic update of an application stops supporting a file format because the parent company has had a falling out with someone like Adobe or Sun... that can be a lot of valuable work lost.
I am normally a big supporter of steam but I can't say this is a good thing. I want my gaming platforms to be about games, not other media,software, or bloatware that I see on the xbox dashboard.
See, this is the sort of thing that people should point out to Valve ahead of time, so they can make sure that their contracts with developers specify that non-optional patches are not allowed to strip functionality from an app. 99% of developers wouldn't even think twice about agreeing to that, since nobody plans to need to do that ahead of time.Callate said:
Not all that surprised by this. I've actually kinda been looking for this functionality from them for a while.
Aren't there a couple non-game software already on the site? Source filmmaker, that one indie developer documentary, some gamer magazines...
You can do it for games, i do it for arma 2 because i rather manually update that with beta builds most of the time.Callate said:
i do not see why you would not have the same options for apps, after all its pretty standard practice to not deploy point upgrades before they are tested in house before they are generally deployed in most work environments, would only be common sense to offer all or more options for the app store as compared to the games store, do not see why they should differ all that much if at all.
I heard about this on Forbes, and frankly, the more I think about it the more I'm realizing that this move will either be useless or it could have an enormous impact on the software industry as a whole.
The addition of automatic updates, cloud-service integration, up-to-date driver support, Steamworks and Steam Workshop integration, and the possibility of companies like Adobe going to a free-to-use model like gaming uses could lead to sweeping changes to the software industry.
Time will tell how this turns out. Either way, I eagerly await September 5th.
The addition of automatic updates, cloud-service integration, up-to-date driver support, Steamworks and Steam Workshop integration, and the possibility of companies like Adobe going to a free-to-use model like gaming uses could lead to sweeping changes to the software industry.
Time will tell how this turns out. Either way, I eagerly await September 5th.
That would be a valid argument if there was ever any kind of circumstance under which I would even halfway consider suing valve. As it stands, Gabe Newell could walk into my house and take a dump on my carpet, and I'd still kiss the ground he walked on for bringing me an entire library of games for the cash between the sofa cushions. I'd rather give away my right to sue a company that does everything right than hold onto that right and buy from a company that does everything wrong.Tenmar said:
I hate to be picky, or maybe i'm reading this wrongly, but shouldn't that be "We need to sell our software ..."? - Unless publishers buy their own software for some reason.Greg Tito said:
OT: I can see this being useful for some users, but all users at this point in time have signed up for Steam specifically for games, game tools and the community that surrounds them, so people wanting to buy things like Sony Vegas from Steam are probably in the minority.
Just calling it now.
To all the people who say this is dumb/silly/stupid, you really didn't pay attention to the article where a lot of people said it was dumb/silly/stupid to distribute games this way. If Valve does this the way they do games, then you'll all be very very wrong.
To all the people who say this is dumb/silly/stupid, you really didn't pay attention to the article where a lot of people said it was dumb/silly/stupid to distribute games this way. If Valve does this the way they do games, then you'll all be very very wrong.