Open-Source Steam

January 14, 2009 9:09 AM

I'm looking to create a software distribution platform similar to Steam. Are there any open-source versions that I could work with? Or are there any directions you can point me to?
posted by philosophistry to Technology (6 answers total)

At the very simplest: a bit torrent tracker with an rss feed. DRM is extra.
posted by rhizome at 10:01 AM on January 14, 2009

To be clear, steam isn't p2p.
posted by TimeDoctor at 11:14 AM on January 14, 2009

No, but it is a file transfer method and you can configure the tracker to enforce single-source downloads. Not much different than a straight http/ftp download, but it's certainly more easily scalable.
posted by rhizome at 1:37 PM on January 14, 2009

And to be sure, the requirements stated in the question are pretty vague.
posted by rhizome at 1:38 PM on January 14, 2009

Response by poster: I appreciate your suggestion rhizome, that's an interesting approach.
posted by philosophistry at 2:35 PM on January 14, 2009

Best answer: What aspects of Steam interest you?

• The purchasing model?
• The fact that the users don't have to deal with installers for things they've purchased?
• The DRM?
• The achievements?
• The multiplayer? (Which could probably be broken down a lot further)
• The social networking?

Keep in mind that much of the attraction of this sort of thing is convenience, especially that the user only has to interact with a single platform to get all this stuff.
posted by Asymptote at 10:22 AM on January 15, 2009