Developer Valve has announced that popular gaming platform Steam will start offering non-gaming apps for PC and Mac users. Until now, Steam has always been a 100% gaming platform offering games such as Portal, Half Life and Skyrim.
Valve issued a statement saying that from September, it will start offering PC and Mac apps “ranging from creativity to productivity”.
The company hopes that it will attract new users by the ease of installation, automatic updating and ability to save work to Steam Cloud space that Steam gamers currently enjoy.
Valve say that the move was taken due to popular demand from users who wanted to use Steam for more than just gaming. However, the new apps will face stiff competition from Microsoft’s own Windows 8 App Store and of course the Apple Mac App Store.
The new apps will be online from September 5th but in the meantime, you can try Steam for Windows or Steam for Mac for yourself.