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Buying programs on Steam: is it worth it?

Within the category of Steam programs we can find a good amount of software, which we can both download, in case they are free programs, and buy if they are paid programs. In addition, if we like to buy Bundles of programs, many times these come with licenses to activate them within this store, just for the convenience of the user.

When we talk about games, Steam has many good things, as well as some bad things that, little by little, are being corrected. But, when we talk about Software and the Valve store, things change, and that is that it has more handicaps than advantages, and can complicate the simple task of installing, updating, and even simply using a program.

Advantages and disadvantages

The main advantage of buying PC programs within this store is that we can have all our licenses for both games and programs centralized in one place. From the client itself we can download it and our Steam account will be used to activate the program and be able to use it, without having to save a license key that, over time, we will probably lose.

Programs purchased on Steam

Furthermore, we can find most interesting software in this store, both paid, such as Wallpaper Engine, and free, as is the case with ShareX, OBS Studio or Blender, among others. Of course, the amount of software that we will find in this store is very limited, and many programs are of low quality. In addition, there is also a lot of program for the development of video games. Therefore, we will not find the same programs here that, for example, we can find in the Windows Store.

Once we download a program from the Steam store, almost always we will depend on the client of games to manage it. For example, we will have to download it from the Steam client, as if it were a game, and we will have to use this same program to update it when there are new versions. What’s more, it is possible that we even have to have Steam open for the program to run without problems, this being the biggest annoyance that we can find when we are going to use any type of program.

When to choose this store to buy a program?

If we are regular users of Steam, within the field of video games, we can take the opportunity to centralize software licenses also within this account. However, if we don’t usually play PC games, and we don’t have a Steam account, then just for programs it is not worth it under any circumstances.

Also, our recommendation would be buy programs that we are going to run at specific times. In other words, if we are going to edit video, we can launch it from Steam but, when we finish the job, we can close everything. If we are going to use programs that are constantly open in the background (as is the case with ShareX), we can find ourselves with a lot of inconvenience.

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