By 2021, the service had over 34,000 games with over 132 million monthly active users. By 2017, users purchasing games through Steam totaled approximately US$4.3 billion, representing at least 18% of global PC game sales according to Steam Spy. The service is the largest digital distribution platform for PC gaming, estimated around 75% of the market share in 2013 according to IHS Screen Digest. The platform also offers other digital content and Valve gaming hardware, including productivity software, game soundtracks, videos and VR headset Valve Index. Mobile apps to access online Steam features were first released for iOS and Android in 2012. Initially developed for Microsoft Windows operating systems, Steam was released for macOS in 2010 and Linux in 2012. Valve released a freely available application programming interface (API) called Steamworks in 2008, which developers can use to integrate Steam's functions into their products, including in-game achievements, microtransactions, and user-created content support. It provides the user with automatic game updating, saved game cloud synchronization, and community features such as friends messaging, in-game chat and a community market. Steam offers various features, like digital rights management (DRM), game server matchmaking, anti-cheat measures, social networking and game streaming services. It was launched as a software client in September 2003 as a way for Valve to provide automatic updates for their games, and expanded to distributing and offering third-party game publishers' titles in late 2005. We’ll see.Steam is a video game digital distribution service and storefront by Valve. Theory: My GeForce GTX 980 Ti melts and/or lights on fire. Look for more about Desktop Theater Mode in a few weeks-it’s set to launch alongside the Vive in early April, and I’ll probably fire it up with something a bit more taxing than Broforce to see how my computer handles running the Vive at the same time as, say, The Witcher 3. I can’t imagine this is where people will spend most of their time-the benefit of the huge monitor is equally outweighed by the heat of wearing the Vive and the fact you can’t actually see what you’re pressing on your keyboard or controller.īut as a fun little addition? Well, virtual reality has a lot of those. Is Desktop Theater Mode worth purchasing a Vive for? Probably not. Anything you can see on your desktop can be routed through the Vive. While In-Home Streaming requires some fidgeting to-for instance-stream from VLC, Valve’s Desktop Theater Mode seems to work more like the Virtual Desktop app for the Oculus Rift. You’re also not limited to Steam apps, from what Valve tells me. Valve says any game that runs above 30 frames per second should work, no problem, and that you can still pull up the Steam Overlay from within the VR environment. But with minimal delay, the game output signal is routed onto this massive screen. Valve tells me that the Desktop Theater Mode uses some of the same technology employed for its Steam In-Home Streaming and Broadcast features-either some incredible foresight on Valve’s part, or lucky happenstance. (Valve didn’t provide screenshots of the experience for publication.) Valve wink-wink-nudged me though that we shouldn’t be surprised if Desktop Theater Mode is opened up to Steam Workshop in the near future, allowing the community to mod in their own fantastical/realistic/sci-fi environments at will.Īnyway, I played Broforce. The “virtual home theater” itself is pretty minimalist, largely avoiding the sort of faux-realism we saw in Netflix’s fake living room/cabin last year. Not that there’s much to see aside from the screen.
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