14 DAY TRIAL // Steam is expanding, having added the ability for gamers to take screenshots of their video games by using the overlay, and information coming from one member of the community suggests that Valve is now preparing to also add the ability for players to capture video from Steam titles.
The information comes from a community player called Political Gamer, who for his long-time participation in the Team Fortress 2 forum has earned a chance to visit the office of Valve and talk to company leader Gabe Newell.
Political Gamer says that Newell talked about the new feature and said that it would be offered to Steam users “very soon”.
The Valve executive also talked about the possible future development for Steam, stating that the digital distribution service might be developed to work on both the iPhone and the Android family of mobile phones.
It's not clear whether Apple, who holds a virtual monopoly on the content distribution on the iPhone, would be interested in allowing Valve to port Steam to phones, considering that they would be able to bring over a rather big list of publishers.
The more open Android phones might be more open to small games being delivered through Steam, as long as gamers get added functionality, like Achievements, social features and cloud-based saved games.
At the moment, Steam and other services like Direct2Drive, Gamersgate and Impulse are growing on the PC, allowing players to pick up video games on launch day without going to a store and regularly delivering older games with significant discounts for those who want to create a digital collection.
It makes sense for Steam to add more functionality to the PC service in the long term, making it easier for users to share content with others and enjoy their library of games and a video tool might even persuade some console gamers to again become interested in the PC.