Gabe Newell has plans to turn Steam into a network API
Valve's Gabe Newell thinks the current form of Steam is becoming a bottleneck between consumers and content creators. Newell says Valve needs to get out of that connection as much as possible, and thinks Steam would be better a a network API. Newell characterizes Steam's current form as a "curated store," but he thinks it would be better as a network API. Video after the break.
"Essentially anybody should be able to publish anything through Steam," he says. Individuals and companies should be able to create their own stores that plug into the Steam backend, and the market will decide which of those venues succeeds. Video of Newell's full talk is embedded below.
Although Newell doesn't lay out a specific plan or timeline for transforming Steam from a Valve-run store into an accessible API, it sounds like that's the direction the company is heading. Interesting. I'm not sure how a patchwork of Steam-based stores would actually work out—or how much of Steam's community functionality might be built into an API—but I'm curious to see what would happen if Valve democratized distribution in that way. As Newell points out earlier in the talk, "I do my job, but if I get Reddit to do my job, they'll do it a lot better. The relevant discussion starts around the 44-minute mark with the tech report.
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Senior Member
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There ain't much quality control from steam anyway.
Senior Member
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Joined: 2008-07-31
If Steam let's everyone join then it just becomes a sort of software Amazon. Thing is, that allows junk software/games and the quality control goes out the window.
Good. No one should be able to tell me what i'm allowed to buy or not buy on steam.
Senior Member
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Joined: 2004-02-18
anybody remember when valve made good games ? , the like's of halflife 1 & 2 i mean but now they seem intent of doing things for easy profit .
i dont expect any more halflife related games any time soon or even ever
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i actually love valve games
left 4 dead
portal
team fortress
and seeing how they treated us with the support of those games its just amazing.
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Yeah cause Steam needs 5,000 more Slendermen games. Green Lighting is a double edge sword. Sometimes it'll keep a really great thing from joining Steam but a lot times, it filters out a TON of garbage.
edit
If Steam let's everyone join then it just becomes a sort of software Amazon. Thing is, that allows junk software/games and the quality control goes out the window.