Over the past decade, Steam has gone from an optional piece of software used to deliver updates to Valve’s games to an annoying hindrance which prevented many from playing Half-Life 2 at launch to the one and only place to purchase PC games for many gamers. It’s been a remarkable transformation, particularly when considering just how significant of a portion of the digital PC games market it commands — Stardock, which operated competing digital distribution service Impulse, estimated Steam’s market share as being 70 percent in 2009. Steam has only grown in size since then, and while it now faces more competition from Origin, Amazon, and others, it remains the preeminent source of digital PC games. Beginning very soon, it will expand into a new market that will help to ensure its future growth even if Origin and company continue to become bigger players in the games space.
Valve announced today that the first pieces of non-gaming software titles will be released on Steam on September 5. No names were revealed; the closest we got to any degree of specificity was a line in the press release which reads, “The Software titles coming to Steam range from creativity to productivity.” That’s still awfully vague, so it looks as if we’ll be waiting a bit longer before finding out exactly what kind of programs you’ll be able to download alongside your copies of Audiosurf and Portal 2.
