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Comment by ChrisNorstrom | Hacker News Reader

Well surprise surprise.

http://www.chrisnorstrom.com/2011/03/re-envisioning-steam-pa...

Naa. I think it was a pretty obvious move. Although my prediction was that they would tackle film and music before software. They obviously tried but after seeing what a pain in the ass it is to work with hollywood / music industry gave up for now. They renamed "My Games" into "Library" with Games, Media, & Tools subtabs and after giving up on the whole media bit just have "Library" now.

Software is a more logical step considering they're already set up to deliver software (games).

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But not all software is created equal: the single-machine sign on limit is OK for games because you'd never try to play two games at once on different computers. But hell if I'm going to buy a copy of TextExpander for my laptop if quits (and needs a password to relaunch) every time I run a game on my desktop.

I'd love to have an alternative to the App Store that doesn't mandate sandboxing and have Apple's mysterious restrictions, but Steam's DRM system is too limiting for me to be comfortable buying "real software" from it.

> I'd love to have an alternative to the App Store that doesn't mandate sandboxing and have Apple's mysterious restrictions

Like http://appbodega.com ?

Exactly like that! But with the toolbar at the top and less of the kitschy storefront skeumorphism. But interface wise, it's still nicer than anything I foresee coming from Valve in the next decade or so.

Bodega really nailed the updates system. It found all of my non-app-store software that was out of date, and handled the updating with one click and a password. It's having trouble with Calibre, but Adium, Transmission, Pixen, BetterTouchTool, and others all worked fine.

Thanks for pointing this out! The only areas I see Steam having an advantage are preexisting users, and the ability to sell cross platform (Mac+Windows+Linux) software.

They also see that their product is an app store, and it is going to get eaten up in the next few years as desktop and mobile OSes converge around security models that will not let unsigned apps from outside the app store onto user devices. This is the same reason they are building out their platform on linux. It may be the largest change they will have to make as a company, to try and convert their entire business away from it's traditional roots as an app (game) store for windows, as windows 8 and further generations introduce tighter security and stricter requirements around app distribution.

The same goes for mac. I'm sure they realized the mac app store was going to kill their business on mac. In a few OS generations, unsigned apps will be unallowed except for the most power users.

This was my initial thought, too. They're in a real pickle though: Is their long-term strategy really to build a platform/ecosystem to compete with Apple, Microsoft, Amazon AND Google? Because that's quite a crowded field, but if they don't build that ecosystem, Steam as a separate line of business for Valve seems like it would have its days numbered.

Only way I can see them getting around that and competing succesfully is if they offer a console-like appliance, which still seems like a huge departure and risk.

I'd love to see movies on Steam, provided they are available worldwide. Amazon and Netflix cater nicely to Americans but the rest of the world has no good alternative.

There is a good alternative, it's just not legal.

> They renamed "My Games" into "Library" with Games, Media, & Tools subtabs and after giving up on the whole media bit just have "Library" now.

This happened a long, long time ago (read: as far back as I can remember).

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