Valve starts selling game development software and tools on Steam

Valve’s popular digital distribution platform – Steam – is mostly known for selling video games. Now, the company is all out to expand its horizons with the release of game development software on the platform. The company was originally slated to list non-game software back in the beginning of September.

Steam now lists many popular game development software and tools such as GameMaker: Studio, Source Film Maker and 3D-Coat. Steam is also selling some tools that allow you to gauge the performance capabilities of your computer, such as 3DMark 11 and 3DMark Vantage. Along with all this, Steam is holding a 10 percent off discount for the first week.

Steam is now selling game development software

This initiative may help smaller development studios get their software out, as Steam plans to use Greenlight for non-game software too. More software titles are expected to be added now after the launch, and developers are welcome to submit their own software via Steam Greenlight.

"The 40 million gamers frequenting Steam are interested in more than playing games," said Mark Richardson at Valve. "They have told us they would like to have more of their software on Steam, so this expansion is in response to those customer requests."

Valve had launched its attempt at letting the customers decide what games would appear on Steam recently. The new service, called Greenlight, has been going through some rough waters though. Due to many bogus games being submitted for Greenlight, Valve had recently decided to add a $100 listing fee for the service. The $100 posting fee will be donated to the Child’s Play charity as, according to Valve, “We have no interest in making money from this, but we do need to cut down the noise in the system”. Those who already have their games on Greenlight will not have to retroactively pay the posting fee for those games, but will need to pay it for any future submissions they make to Greenlight. This is one of the two changes Valve is making to the service. The second one is mostly a change in the way games are displayed on the Greenlight page. According to Valve, “The next time you visit Steam Greenlight you’ll be shown a smaller, manageable list of games that you haven’t rated. This view is a mix of popular games and new games to Greenlight”.

Announced earlier this summer, Steam Greenlight allows developers and publishers to post information and media about their game in an effort to convince the Community that the game should be released on Steam. Greenlight piggybacks on Steam Workshop’s flexible system that organises content and lets customers rate and leave feedback.

“We’ve been working on this feature for the last few months with the input from a group of indie partners, and the response has been extremely positive,” said Valve’s Anna Sweet when the service was launched. “With the additional help of beta testers, we are able to launch with a solid line-up of titles for the community to start viewing and rating. And, as we’ve done with all Steam features, we intend to continually grow and modify Greenlight as more and more developers and community members have a chance to get involved”.