Something like App Store for desktop apps?

News & General Discussion
1

I love the iTunes App Store. It is so easy to quickly publish an app and then sit back and do basically no support, leaving all my time free to concentrate on the “next thing”. However… the number of iPhone users still pale in comparison to Windows Mac desktop users (obviously). So is there some other service similar to the App Store but made for desktop computers? I know about Regnow, Esellerate and etc. I’m looking for something even more hands-off than those services. … I wish Apple would do a Mac OS X App Store!

:?:

2

For Windows and Games, Steam most likely fills that position.

3

For Macs, there’s macgamesarcade.com.

–Eric

4

Are casual games popular on Steam? I haven’t used Steam at all, I have always assumed it was for AAA titles that target the “shooter” crowd.

5

Have you sold through them? Do you have any opinions?

6

Naw, Steam actually has quite a few indie and casual games.
World of Goo, Hinterland, Buccaneer and many more games as examples.

7

Haven’t sold through them, but I’ve downloaded some games and it seems well done.

–Eric

8

well not for publishing (I’m tired) but I am creating a unity gallery website based on the unity engine (similar to flash websites but a unity one!) once I’m done you could publish it there and get publicity for your app online.

9

Steam sucks, i wouldnt bother with something so inherently disfunctional

/2c

AC

10

Never had any problems with steam … and all my games summed up are about 100GB?
Part of them present on all my 3 machines actually.

11

I’m in love with Steam. It’d be great to have a game up on their store, and the whole interface is really seamless (chatting with friends while playing games, unified server browsers).

So, yeah.

12

Right, I brought Half-life 2, 2nd hand, and it turned out to be tied to a steam account, that never worked. i think the seller scammed me, but if it was like any other game, It wouldnt need the whole pain in ass steam thing. So its the steam interface that made it basically unusable. Then I brought it online, off steam, and nothing, absolutely nothing, will let me play it offline. And Ive been through all their tedious webpages and forums . So my PC, which has a good safe life without the need to go online, has to go online to play one steam game. I dont even have the capability to go online with my pc, as we now use an airport thing, let alone antivirus, anti spyware, security updates etc, if you dont go online you dont need all that shit. But if you want to play HL2, you need all that shit. and it totally sucks.

So presently I’ve brought HL2 TWICE, and cant play either version.

So yeah I wont ever spend a cent with those mongrels again.

AC

13

I am sorry for your experience, but Steam is having enormous success and I find it very useful. I can play online and offline, and I dont have to bother to keep alive my game cds since I can download the full game anytime I want.

So i consider it very successful as a game launcher and holder and as a mean to distribute games to end consumers.
Even Electronic Arts had to admit its usefulness and they’re starting to distribute their games through Steam.

14

You need a PC thats able to go online. Activate the game and then set it to offline mode.
Then you can copy the generated license to your pure offline machine and it will work.
And that does, at least to me, not suck, its just working copy protection that does not annoy me as customer with useless disks and other crap.

I guess your gaming will become hard in the future as EA and others have pure online based security schemes as well so either you get your box online or you can’t activate it. We are in 2009 and its fair to assume that a gamer (and even want to be gamer) has their box online, especially for games with online mode.

15

Right, Steam is very popular and useful for many gamers, and it’s possible to reach a large audience through it.

However, not just anybody can get their game on Steam in the first place (last I checked). It needs to be approved by Valve, and their standards are pretty high. Sure they welcome indie games, but not just any indie games.

One way to get Valve’s attention and maybe a chance to negotiate a Steam deal with them is by winning some reputable award, such as the Independent Games Festival awards, or at least be nominated. Several indie games that went that route have later appeared on Steam.

16

It got simpler to get onto Steam since the introduction of SteamWorks but Valve still asks for working games unlike Apple who let everyone send in his totally nonrunable trash to the AppStore sadly

17

You’re right, its main flaw (from a developer standpoint) is that its very hard to publish your game through it. Anyway I continue to believe that Steam can become a great opportunity for everyone… mainly for indies.

I think that you cant bring to the market videogames in a successful way if you dont target specific audiences.
Maybe the answer to all needs of indie developers can be a scenario with one Steam (or another similar distributing platform) for each game niche: sports, strategy, wargaming, puzzle, etc

At the very least, I am happy gamers use steam so they become more accustomed to buying games directly from the internet.

18

Just to let people know. TIGSource (http://www.tigsource.com/) is playing around with making a steam like client for the indie community tentatively called the TIGBox.

Post that talks about it: http://tigsource.com/articles/2009/01/09/tigdb-advances