It will start taking submissions of software titles Sept. 5 via its Steam Greenlight site.

The company, which claims 40 million users of its PC and Mac games,  is not to be taken lightly. As Forbes reported in March: “Privately held Valve has dominated the digital sales channel [for games] since 2003. Its Steam service started as a distribution mechanism for its own games; lack of competition allowed it to seize as much as 70 percent of the market.”

According to the Steam blog:

“The Software titles coming to Steam range from creativity to productivity. Many of the launch titles will take advantage of popular Steamworks features, such as easy installation, automatic updating, and the ability to save your work to your personal Steam Cloud space so your files may travel with you.”

When it comes to broadly used productivity software, Valve will face a ton of competition. Microsoft already fields an online store and is building access to new Office and SharePoint stores right into the next releases of those widely used business packages.

In the post Mark Richardson, a Valve business development exec, said the company’s user base is interested in more than games. “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.”

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Indie Game‘s story began on the web, thanks to Kickstarter funding, and covers a topic near and dear to the Internet’s heart: the rise of the independent video game designer.

So while, according to co-director James Swirsky via email, the theatrical release and an earlier sold outscreening tour were profitable ways of building word-of-mouth about the film, making the film available online was extremely important to him and co-director Lisanne Pajot, as “that is where our audience is.”

“We wanted to get this film into the hands of those people who want to see it the most as quickly as reasonably possible,” he added. “Which is the main motivation behind the very tight release windows we’re working within.”

Indie Game‘s digital release will come through three platforms — one expected, two unconventional. The film, like many independent films before it, will be available on iTunes, but it’ll also be released by VHX as a direct DRM-free download — the second-ever project to be distributed by VHX, following their release of Aziz Ansari’s comedy special last April.

The story of how Indie Game ended up working with VHX couldn’t be more webby. Via the film’s extremely active Twitter account, the filmmakers mentioned they were looking for a distribution platform — instantly, Andy Baio (@waxpancake) connected the two:

Check the date stamp on that tweet — it’s less than two weeks ago. Only nine days after making contact, Indie Game‘s deal with VHX was solidified. “A new record for us, and a trend we hope will continue,” VHX co-founder Jamie Wilkinson said via email.

There’s no exact date yet on when the VHX for Artists platform will be officially open for all, according to co-founder Casey Pugh, but “it will be soon,” he promised.

In addition to iTunes and VHX, Indie Game will also be distributed through Steam, Valve’s video game distribution platform. That’s right, a gaming platform. According to Swirsky, with the exception of a zombie film created by Valve employees several years ago, Indie Game is the first film to ever receive major release through the popular service.

However, the decision to work with Steam made sense for Swirsky and Pajot, because of the film’s deep connections with the independent gaming community. “From a pure distribution standpoint, we can not get any closer to our core audience that being listed side by side with the games that are featured in the film,” Swirsky said. “If you like and bought Super Meat Boy, Braid, World of Goo, etc, there’s a good chance you might be interested in the backstory behind those games, and games like them. Steam brings us to the core of our most relevant audience in a very unique way. It’s kind of amazing.”

Across platforms, the cost will be $10, though those pre-ordering on Steam can purchase it for $8.99. According to Swirsky, “When it comes to sales and knowing their consumer base, Steam is second to none. They know their stuff. They know how to effective launch, maintain and promote the products within their system. When they suggested debuting with a pre-order pricing incentive, it made a lot of sense to us.”

To Swirsky and Pajot, each platform has its unique advantages. Steam, as previously mentioned, delivers the film to the most passionate portion of its fanbase. With iTunes, he says, it’s “a juggernaut. We always wanted this film to be there. They bring an audience and ease of purchase/viewing that we could only dream of with this film.”

And working with VHX, Swirsky says, “allows us to continue the direct conversation with our audience that we’ve been having since Day 1. It’s all on our site, it’s all under our control, it’s as personal as delivering the final film to the end audience as we can get digitally. VHX is doing some really exciting things. We’re really proud to be a part of it all.”

“It’s truly a great film. It also perfectly aligns with our beliefs on the future of film,” Pugh said. “Crowd-funded on Kickstarter and self-released on VHX. This is where the film, video and television business is going and it’s only the tip of the iceberg.”

Between the three platforms, Swirsky and Pajot are hopeful to not only make up the actual production budget of the film, but also compensate themselves for the two years they spent making the film. “The film is very much on track to make back its budget. But that’s a budget that doesn’t include paying ourselves for the past two years. If we go by that budget, we still have a little ways to go. But it should be worth it,” Swirsky said.

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I was late to the Portal party, having only played it for the first time last year, and despite being exposed to years of hype (the game originally came out in October 2007), it still managed to exceed my expectations. It’s funny, and challenging yet also accessible, so give it a shot even if you’re not usually much of a first-person gamer.

Each level in the game is a series of rooms from which you have to escape, using only your wits and handheld teleportation gun, which fires Portals that allow you to quickly traverse great distances in an instant. If you’re into maddening puzzle games like Unblock Me on the iPhone and iPad, you’ll be amazed at how well a similar concept translates to a game with first-person shooter mechanics. The game holds up surprisingly well despite being four years old now, too.

Portal usually retails for $10 on Steam, and its sequel, released this year, costs $29.99. This is a smart move for Valve, which is likely hoping to encourage folks to grab Portal 2. I still haven’t pulled the trigger on the newer game, but the only thing preventing me from doing so is the knowledge that it’ll be a huge time suck whenever I do start playing.

Getting Portal requires that you first download and install the Steam store, but it doesn’t take long, and the store is actually something you should have on your Mac anyway if you’re at all into gaming. The nice thing about Portal being an older game is that it also doesn’t have very high system requirements; an integrated Intel HD 3000 or higher card should suit you just fine. Plus, since it’s free, there’s no harm in just downloading it and seeing if it runs.

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Central to the game’s premise is the concept of a device that can create “portals” between locations, enabling you to walk through one magical hole and emerge anywhere else. Add a physics engine and some crafty puzzles to that idea and it becomes an engaging, addictive adventure that’s strikingly different from normal first-person-shooter fare.

It also becomes fodder for the imagination of fans — including director and Totally Rad Show co-host Dan Trachtenberg, who began shooting a short film inspired by the franchise two years ago. Following a premiere for TRS fans at Comic-Con, he posted it to YouTube this week.

Using, among other things, Terminator 2 as an inspiration, Trachtenberg’s take on Portal strips the franchise down to its central elements — a girl and her portal-making gun. This means that No Escape lacks the whimsical humor of the original games, which is the primary criticism of the short, based on Twitter and Facebook commentary that I saw. Instead it has flawless visual effects that capture perfectly the potential of the Portal gun in a film context. For the first time, I believed that Portal as a movie could actually work.

I’m not the only one who feels that way. The film caught fire upon its release on Tuesday, receiving huge blog coverage, massive amounts of retweeting and a YouTube front page feature. It was even aired in full on cable channel G4′s Attack of the Show (I am currently a writer for the show but had no involvement in the decision to air it). As of writing, it had over 3.5 million views and nearly 150,000 thumbs-up ratings.

Most of the commentary surrounding No Escape‘s release online has taken the form of “Someone just give Trachtenberg a whole bunch of money and let him make a real Portal movie already.” And these days, that’s not such a strange idea — indeed, there’s some precedent for that path, the most recent example being Kevin Tanchareon’s take on Mortal Kombat.

Mortal Kombat: Legacy started off as what would technically be a fan film (despite the participation of Star Trek: Voyager’s Jeri Ryan and Michael Jai White) and then was picked up as a 10-episode web series by Warner Bros. And sure, a web series isn’t a feature film. But Mortal Kombat: Legacy, which was distributed by Machinima, has received more than 46 million views, according to a Machinima spokesperson.

The question is, though, Is it really possible for Portal to get the same treatment?

In an interview with the blog Very Aware, Trachtenberg not only mentioned his inspirations but also addressed that criticism I mentioned earlier, about No Escape’s lacking the Portal games’ quirky humor:

Well it’s certainly redundant to say I love the game and its universe, but to be honest, I was more excited about seeing the technology in the game in a different world. The video game is very whimsical and somewhat cartoony — I really wanted to explore the idea of taking the fundamentals of Portal and placing it in a much grittier, serious place.

Going gritty was also part of what impressed Warner Bros. about Tanchareon’s take on the Mortal Kombat franchise. But what was truly key to the web series’ getting greenlit was the fact that Tanchareon brought a fresh approach to the concept. There will be those who argue that it’s not really Portal without an insane AI playfully threatening to murder you at the start of every level. Those people might include the folks at Valve, which appear to retain the film rights for the franchise. But with No Escape, Trachtenberg has shown Valve that if it wants someone with an original voice to adapt the franchise, he’s probably the right man for the job.

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Update: As pointed out by commenters, gamers who already own the games don’t have to buy the bundle or individual games to help prompt an early release of the game. Those who already have the titles can just play the games, and their progress will help speed up the release. People who don’t have any of the titles are encouraged to buy all or some of the bundle.

The promotion, which has the potential to bring in significant revenue for the game bundle, is being met with tough reactions from many gamers, who feel like it was a bad surprise and was pushing them to buy unwanted games. That’s in part because the promotion was the extension of an ongoing alternate reality game marketing campaign by Valve, meant to stoke interest in Portal 2′s April 19 release. The game included a series of clues that suggested the game might be released early: Friday.

Instead, fans found a timer counting down to the April 19 release of Portal 2. The site said it’s recruiting CPUs to initiate a faster reboot of GLaDOS, the evil computer in the original Portal. In order to do that, users are encouraged to buy the Potato Sack bundle of 13 independent games, collectively discounted to $40. So far, none of the games have been bought more than 5,000 times, well short of the apparent threshold for early release. At this point, it’s unclear if enough gamers will jump in to force an early release of the game.

Though the Portal 2 promotion feels like it could use some more thought, it’s another example of how companies and brands are using creative ideas to distribute content. In 2007, Radiohead tried a pay-what-you-want model for its album In Rainbows, which it released directly to fans. Last year, a group of independent game developers banded together to offer the Humble Bundle, allowing gamers to pay what they want for the $80 value, with the money going to developers and a couple of non-profits. With Kickstarter, the crowd funding start-up in New York, there’s also a new way for projects to distribute their work and get paid. In fact, game developer Muse Games used Kickstarter to sell limited editions of its CreaVures title as part of the game’s launch.

Those efforts, though, highlight why the Portal 2 promotion has limited appeal. The fans are open to getting content in different ways if they see value in it. That’s a key part of Kickstarter’s proposition: that projects need to offer supporters some kind of reward for their pledge. With the Portal 2 promotion, it takes up to $40 to do your part to get the title released early — (you can also buy games individually) which is a fair amount to spend on games — so you can have the privilege of spending more money on the game you really want. And there’s no tipping point like in Kickstarter to ensure an investment will pay off in the desired action. People just have to buy up and hope that others join in too. It may be a nice gesture to support indie game developers, but for people who are really just interested in Portal 2, it can be a little too much selling. Finally, the pay off is pretty minimal. It would be nice to get a game early, but with the April 19 release date fast approaching and the threshold for release a ways off, it’s not that much of a benefit to get the game a few days early. A week or more, and that might be cool.

I still like that Valve was trying something new here, but the execution seems off. But done right, we could see similar campaigns work well in generating buzz, driving extra revenue and increasing consumer loyalty to. Right now, Portal 2′s promotion seems to only hitting two out of the three.

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Us Mac gamers are a much abused, much maligned lot. We get titles late, and most never at all. By the time most titles do come to the Mac, we’ve probably already broken down and played them using Boot Camp or that gaming PC we hide in the closet that we bought specifically for the purpose. Today, things are looking up.

PC game maker and distributor Valve is dropping all kinds of hints, which are by no means ambiguous, that Steam and many of its titles are headed to the Mac sometime in the near future. MacRumors and various other Mac news sites received teaser images direct from Valve themselves, all of which point to that very same conclusion.

The teaser received by MacRumors features Half-Life protagonist Gordon Freeman wielding a crowbar and wearing an Apple logo on his chest. The image was sent “in anticipation of an upcoming announcement from Valve.” No timeframe or additional details about this announcement were included, however, so we’re left to speculate about that, although next week sees the annual Game Developers Conference taking place in San Francisco, so that’s a good candidate for a potential date.

Other sites also received tantalizing teaser images in a similar vein, which, when you notice the iPhone-like selector control at the bottom of the images, gives a pretty good indication that all are from the same series and further evidence of a Mac connection. MacNN received one using turrets from Team Fortress 2 and Portal acting as Mac and PC from the Justin Long/John Hodgman series of ads:

Shacknews got this image of a Team Fortress 2 Heavy class character as an iPod silhouette:

Eurogamer received this one, featuring a Left 4 Dead character and the “Hate Different” twist on Apple’s longtime slogan:

Rock, Paper, Shotgun got another promo, which plays off of the ad for the first Mac and seems the most clear about Valve’s intentions:

Finally, Macworld received this picture of Half-Life 2′s Alyx Vance character reenacting Apple’s instantly recognizable 1984 commercial:

Additional evidence for the introduction of some kind of Mac version of Steam can be found in the inclusion of Mac elements in the latest beta builds of the game marketplace software. For Mac users who’ve maybe shut out all gaming news out of bitterness or jealousy, Steam is Valve’s digital game distribution software for the PC. It also provides digital rights management (DRM) services for developers, and multiplayer services for users. So far, only Mac Games Arcade provides a similar service for the Mac, but that’s honestly like comparing an aircraft carrier (Steam) to a dinghy (Mac Games Arcade).

Like the game itself, Valve’s video series is a clever reworking of traditional first-person shooter conventions, eschewing realistic violence and macho fantasy for cartoonish graphics and ironic wit. (In Meet the Sniper, TF2′s ruthless Aussie marksman gets flustered by his disapproving parents.) Meet the Spy is by far the most ambitious installment, depicting a trio of befuddled squaddies who try to locate an enemy agent in their midst, only to be undone by comic mishap and a surprisingly romantic plot twist.

The series was originally based on monologues that Valve writer Erik Wolpaw drafted for internal use, first as audition scripts, then as a reference guide for the voice actors ultimately hired to record the in-game dialog. According to editor and director Marc Scapparo, the plan was always to evolve these movies over successive installments, from mere character sketches to full-fledged shorts. Working with a Wolpaw script, Scapparo and his team spent a month capturing in-game footage for Spy, then another month enhancing it in post-production. As with Valve’s games, the video was constantly screened to test audiences, and iterated according to their feedback. In the original version, for example, the Red spy was unmasked as the Blue spy, which confused many early viewers, especially those not familiar with the game — sending the team back to the studio for a story overhaul. “Humor’s pretty subjective,” as Wolpaw put it to me. “[But] if someone doesn’t understand what they saw, that’s a pretty objective [problem].”

While Meet the Spy was just a single element in the promotion of Team Fortress 2′s latest update, it’s certainly one of the most buzzed about. TF2 lead developer Robin Walker partly attributes this popularity to the fact that Scapparo and Wolpaw are members of the game’s development team, not external marketers. In the Valve development philosophy, he said, “marketing is a game design problem.” Then there’s the buzz you get from unauthorized distribution: Though it was officially put on Steam, Valve’s online distribution service, on May 19, a leaked copy had already been uploaded dozens of times and seen by countless gamers days earlier.

Denying persistent Internet rumors to the contrary, Walker told me the video was not intentionally leaked by the company. However, he added, “We regard [the leak] as an unbridled success,” pointing to the additional burst of press it provoked. The developers even added a last-minute knowing wink to the final product. If you look carefully at the alarm system in the beginning, the “Intruder Alert” signal sits alongside a new warning message: “Leaked Video.”

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About two months following the pricing experiment by App Cubby’s David Barnard, Gas Cubby gets a 2.0 upgrade.

Gas Cubby provides a way to track gas mileage for your automobile. But more than that, all maintenance and other costs sunk into your vehicle are dutifully tracked as well. Tilt your iPhone horizontally and view graphs that can tell you how well your car is performing (or not), and how much of a drain on your wallet it may be. And my favorite feature: setup maintenance reminders so you don’t miss that oil change when the sticker falls off the inside of your windshield.

Here’s a listing of what Version 2 adds to Gas Cubby:

• Online Sync – backup your data (useful if migrating from Lite and Full versions)
• Custom Service Reminders – remember to change your pine tree air freshener
• Data entry shortcuts – move through data entry in succession rather than back and forth
• Gas Stats Chart – quick look at all stats numbers
• Swipe navigation of Detail view – no need to back out to list of entries first
• Date filter buttons for charts – narrow your view based on time frame
• Line for averages in charts – your average results
• Custom Octane ratings – in case fuel is different in your neck of the woods
• Setting for calculator style number pad – a change of scenery if you like
• Badge icon for past due service reminders – visual reminder from the home screen

As I’ve been among the beta testers for Gas Cubby 2.0, I can say the updated features are nice. This already polished app has received a solid handful of features, making it even nicer to use. Would I call it a pleasure to track my vehicle’s statistics? Actually, I would.

As in the past, I definitely recommend Gas Cubby if you’re looking for a good way to keep your vehicle’s records up to date. Grab your own copy from the App Store for $9.99, or try out the Lite version for free.

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Paying for games with advertising is a growing business. Sites like Kongregate share ad revenue with casual game developers, and ad networks like NeoEdge have seen strong growth from their focus on casual gaming. Valve has delivered some of the most popular games in recent history (for an overview of the Valve network’s distribution and size, check out the piece we wrote back in April.) Acquiring Valve, which has recently added social network features to its distribution client, would help Google get a stronger foothold in this space.

But Valve isn’t a gaming play for Google. This is about software distribution and updates through its Steam platform.

Valve publishes multigigabyte content in dozens of countries, and it wraps that content in digital rights, ranking and payment systems. The games work offline, checking in occasionally to validate licenses and look for updates. It also patches those games. Of course, now that Google is in the desktop replacement business, it needs a way to update Chrome.

The ability to add features to Chrome is built into the terms of service, and Google will want to publish fixes as well as new features like, say, a P2P client. Security experts, quick to attack Microsoft for other failings, praise the robustness and security of Windows Updates; Google needs a good solution too.

If the acquisition goes through, Google will get a ready-made, commerce-enabled, geographically proven platform for multigigabyte content distribution. It will also be able to keep Chrome current and address any zero-day exploits that might emerge. It’s a smart move that both software publishers and content delivery networks need to watch closely.

Update: Several pubs have contacted the companies in the hopes of confirming the story, but all have been told that this rumor is just that – a rumor, and nothing more.

See also:

• Building Steam
• Give Me Steam
• Part 1: Valve’s Steam Survey of 1M+ Desktops & Their Components
• Part 2: The Valve Survey: Steam Goes Global
• Part 3: The Steam Survey: How Much Storage Is Out There?
• Part 4: The Steam Survey: Our Changing Screens

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Traditional game publishers weren’t happy. But the resulting legal battle between Valve and Vivendi was ultimately won in Valve’s favor. Today, the Steam network lists 259 titles, and delivers games to roughly 1.3 million users. The distribution model has also revitalized veteran games like Deus Ex, as well as breakout indie titles such as Portal, Ragdoll Kungfu and Audiosurf. In January, the company launched Steamworks, a set of publishing and development tools with gameplay and sales analytics built in. And on March 17, Epic announced that it would distribute its Unreal series on the Steampowered network.

One of the things the Steam agent does is collect data on gamers’ systems. Since 2004, Valve has published these statistics periodically. They represent a snapshot of the world’s gaming desktops, detailing everything from language to video cards to storage space.

We’ve crunched the results of the last four years’ surveys in GigaOM’s supercomputers (at least by 1960s standards), and with the help of the Internet Way-Back Machine, here’s what we learned:

• AMD (and ATI, the video card company it acquired) is struggling, losing market and mind share to Intel and video card maker Nvidia. The current top six video cards reported by Steam all belong to Nvidia.
• Thanks to the explosion in broadband adoption, gaming has grown worldwide. In the last four years, the number of non-English Steam users grew to over 40 percent from 10 percent, with German and French desktops comprising the largest share.
• Gamers have said “No thanks” to Windows Vista; Windows XP is the gamer’s platform of choice. Hackers have been hard at work trying to make best-selling titles like Halo 2 and Shadowrun work with Windows XP instead of Vista.
• Traditional 4:3 ratio screens are gradually being replaced by widescreen (16:9) displays, but this growth comes from large-sized displays. We can conclude that the growth is less because of small-screen notebooks and more because of desktop flatscreen displays — suggesting that game-grade notebooks like those from Alienware are still the exception.
• Multiple monitors remain a relatively uncommon phenomenon. Valve has only been collecting data on dual-display systems since its April, 2006, survey, and in that time the number has risen to 3.6 percent from 2.4 percent.

For more details, charts, and graphs on the survey’s results and supporting graphs, check out the accompanying research report put together by GigaOM.

* Part 1: Part 1: Valve’s Steam Survey of 1M+ Desktops & Their Components
* Part 2: The Valve Survey: Steam Goes Global
* Part 3: The Steam Survey: How Much Storage Is Out There?
* Part 4: The Steam Survey: Our Changing Screens

Disclaimer: The components of gaming systems have changed greatly in four years. In 2004, for example, many video cards and drivers simply didn’t exist; while today, 4-year-old cards are obsolete. Valve also surveys different things over time, and the number of respondents varies from survey to survey. So while we’ve made an effort to normalize the data here, it may not be entirely statistically accurate.

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