The gaming industry has come to know the term "Valve Time" very well. Basically, it means that a release date that is offered up by game developer Valve should be taken with a grain of salt. It appears that "Valve Time" might have affected plans for the company to launch non-gaming software applications on its Steam download service.
A few weeks ago, Valve announced that non-gaming software would be available on Steam starting September 5th. That date has come and gone with no such launch, and there's been no comment from Valve about the reason for the delay. No new launch date has been offered either (we have sent an email to Valve but as of this writing have yet to get a response).
To be fair, Valve has been very busy lately with other parts of Steam. It revamped its Steam Community in August and later that month, it launched Steam Greenlight, a way for small game developers to rally public support for getting their games published on Steam. However, a lot of bogus games were posted on Steam Greenlight and Valve was forced to add a $100 registration fee (proceeds will go to the Child's Play charity).
Many people believe Valve is entering the non-gaming software distribution business as an answer to Microsoft's Windows 8 and its own downloadable Windows Store feature.
Image via Valve
18 Comments - Add comment