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Comment by zanny | Hacker News Reader

I'm pretty sure Google will ban it. They don't allow competing app stores (same reason Amazon basically forked the entire stack for their Kindle devices).

Maybe Valve will distribute Steam Android devices, but that seems silly.

If Valve wants to get mobile, they need to hope for the success of Ubuntu Phone / Plasma Active / Tizen. Even Ubuntu Phone is probably going to block in the Canonical app store competing markets.

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You can download Amazon AppStore on your Android phone, but you can't find it on Google Play, you have to download the apk from Amazon website.

By stack I mean app store stack. If Valve releases Steam for Android you will have to manually get it from them because Google will never allow it.

Yes, but I don't see a difference between this and Steam on PC. An appstore is just an easy way to download apps. Steam can make a special homepage on Steam PC + a badge + a free valve game for every gamer using the app, and the google interdiction will just be nothing.

It is expectations and habits. On Android devices, people expect to get applications from Play / Amazon stores rather than manually downloading and installing an apk. I expect that a supermajority of Android users by a huge margin would not even understand the concept of "download and install an application package" even though they do it every day on Windows. They see Android, they go to the app store for programs.

I have the amazon store installed, and I used to have another one as well. Google doesn't ban anything, just doesn't put it on Google Play.

Google cant ban apps. They do not have the ability. Sure, they can prevent it from going on their market, but nothing is stopping you from downloading an apk from anywhere (or making your own) and installing it.

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