‘WB Play’ rumoured to be a Steam competitor from Warner Bros

Warner Bros has filed a series of trademarks for what reportedly could be a digital retail and streaming platform.

The Escapist reports that the filings for ‘WB Play’ concern a number of activities such as ‘online retail store services’, ‘audio and video broadcasting services’ and ‘downloadable virtual goods’.

Of the last point, the description reads: "Downloadable virtual goods; downloadable electronic strategy and instructional guides for computer and video games; computer game software; video game software; audio and video recordings in the fields of computer and video games; downloadable multimedia files containing artwork, text, audio, video, games, and internet web links relating to computer and video."

Publishers such as Ubisoft (uPlay) and EA (Origin) have already established their own distribution portals to rival the market-leading Steam, although the former still offers new releases via Valve’s service, while EA offers back-catalogue titles through Steam.

Plenty of other publishers sell digital games via their own websites as well, with some of them also offering other publishers’ titles too.

Warner of course has plenty other media content to offer aside from games, including a sizable movie business.

All of which doesn’t even take into account the console market – which is heavy bossed by Sony’s PSN and Microsoft’s Xbox Live Marketplace, and the smartphone sector’s big three – Apple’s iTunes, Google Play and the Amazon App Store.