Valve has announced plans to expand Steam beyond gaming. The digital distribution service will begin offering software ranging from creativity to productivity and will integrate Steamworks features including easy installation, automatic updating and the ability to save work to the Steam cloud.

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Software will begin to arrive on Steam on September 5th and will continue to be added from that point forward. Developers will also be able to submit their titles to Steam Greenlight , which allows the community to rate products to determine whether or not they should be sold on Steam."The 40 million gamers frequenting Steam are interested in more than playing games," Valve’s Mark Richardson said. "They have told us they would like to have more of their software on Steam, so this expansion is in response to those customer requests."

Adding non-games is Steam’s biggest move since expanding to Mac in 2010.

Steam has offered content other than games in the past, including digital magazines and more, but the move to incorporate a robust catalog of apps is Valve’s first clear attempt to compete with the Mac App Store . Examples of the software Steam will offer haven’t been announced yet, but expect more news to be released in the coming weeks.

Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s associate news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following him on Twitter or IGN