Valve is today expanding their popular Steam publishing platform from just games (and a few movies) to now offering a very small selection of software for Windows, set to expand soon.
For the next week GameMaker: Studio, 3D-Coat, ArtRage Studio Pro, CameraBag 2, 3DMark Vantage, and 3DMark 11 will be available with a 10% discount from RRP. And the benefits from buying through Steam, as well as the 10% discount, includes, for some of the apps, features such as automatic updates and even saving files to Valve’s cloud.
So far this looks like another of Valve’s experiments, another high-profile one being confirmed Steam hardware and big-screen mode, and we’ll have to wait and see whether this line-up expands in a big way. But I’d have to say Apple and Microsoft might want to watch out. A multi-platform app store, which is entirely possible in the future with Steam, would be killer.