Valve -- creators of game franchises such as Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Team Fortress -- and leading technologies -- such as Steam and Source -- has announced the first set of software titles heading to Steam, marking an expansion to the platform most commonly known as a leading destination for Mac and PC games.

The software titles coming to Steam range from creativity to productivity, according to Mark Richardson at Valve. 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, he adds.

More Software titles will be added in an ongoing fashion following the Sept. 5. Developers will be welcome to submit Software titles via Steam Greenlight, Richardson says. For more info go to www.steampowered.com .