Steam Might Be Getting TV Shows, Movies And Music

A small update to Valve’s Steam software beta a few hours ago has added in some new app categories — including music, TV series, and films. Will you soon be able to buy and watch episodes of Gabe of Thrones through Steam?

As ValveTime recounts, Steam has gone through a lot of development since its launch in 2003. In September 2012 the Steam team launched Big Picture, although it hasn’t had a great deal of improvement since that original release. In September 2013, Valve started offering software like 3DMark through Steam (oh, and Steam Universe), so this most recent beta update could be the continuation of a yearly upgrade cycle, and could mean see something pretty exciting happening in a week or two.

As it stands, Steam is already the digital download store du jour for gamers, eclipsing its nearest rival, EA’s Origin, purely through the sheer force of a decade of user accounts. If it branched out into other media, Steam would be a to rival Google Play and Apple’s iTunes Store. There are a few films on Steam at the moment — like Indie Game: The Movie — but a much wider selection of media would make it more appealing for building a long-lifed digital content library.

SteamDB broke the news of the app updates in a tweet early this morning Australian time:

Valve added some new app types in a recent Steam Beta update: film, TV series, video, plugin and music. #hype pic.twitter.com/P2OLtmB7Sk — Steam Database (@SteamDB) August 10, 2014

To access the new app types — not that they exist as yet — you’ll need to be a member of the Steam Beta Update group, which you can join in the Accounts tab of the software’s settings page. [Twitter]