Tuesday, October 02, 2012, 05:13 pm

Valve now offering non-game software through Steam online store

By Mikey Campbell

Valve, maker of popular PC games like Counter-Strike, Half-Life and Left 4 Dead, on Tuesday brought non-game apps to its Steam online storefront, with the first offerings being a suite of developer and multimedia tools.


The company calls the new editions "Software" titles, which launched with a total of seven products: Painting and drawing tool ArtRage Studio Pro; Photo editing tool CameraBag 2; Game creation suite GameMaker: Studio; Movie making tool Source Filmmaker; Animation modeling tool 3D-Coat; and benchmarking tools 3DMark Vantage and 3DMark 11.

According to Valve, some of the launch titles will take advantage of the Steamworks features, which allow for streamlined installation, automatic updating and cloud storage. Users for certain supported programs can also share their work through Steam Workshop.

Currently, all Software offerings are Windows-only, however OS X compatible programs are expected to hit the store in the future.

In celebration of the new category's launch, all new Software titles are being sold with a 10 percent discount until the end of the week.