20 Years Ago Steam Was Officially Revealed

And everyone was so OVERJOYED when they found out they needed it to play Half Life 2! We were so filled with joy that the venom shot right out of our bodies and onto the internet. ;)
 
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Zloth said:
And everyone was so OVERJOYED when they found out they needed it to play Half Life 2! We were so filled with joy that the venom shot right out of our bodies and onto the internet. ;)
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I remember being really pissed off, waiting for it to decrypt over my dial-up connection. And it crashed often.
I got ADSL not long after (maybe Steam helped push me that way?) but still hated Steam for years, as my ADSL wasn't all that fast.
Now that I have almost GB fiber, I love the convenience of Steam.
 
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While Steam has been mostly liked in the last years, I wonder what the recourse is if Gabe ever steps down and the company takes a turn for the worse. Or if there's some other thing that makes Steam change direction. Or if Steam ever goes belly-up. There's been talks that the company would issue a patch to remove any steam drm from the games. I really wonder how easy that is to do. And how many studios will actually do it. And how many have moved on from those games, and are not maintaining it anymore. And how enforceable that is on developers/publishers to do.

Yeah, I've been mostly sticking my head in the sand for that course of action. Since I don't think it will be pretty.
 
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Steam will never go belly-up. It's too big. It might go through major changes one day, but I don't see a scenario where we would lose our games.

If the DRM ever needed to be patched out, I don't see why it wouldn't be possible for it to be done universally rather than having to rely on every publisher to do it separately.
 
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JDR13 said:
If the DRM ever needed to be patched out, I don't see why it wouldn't be possible for it to be done universally rather than having to rely on every publisher to do it separately.
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I guess it depends on how hard the dependency on Steam is for each client. Technically, it could be done by Valve just releasing a Steam server emulator, where all games keep thinking they're talking to the real services.

And now thinking about Valve's policy against piracy, that in order for them to be succesful they don't need a very strong DRM; they just need to offer people a better deal/experience than the pirates do. So with this in mind, it could be that it's relatively easy to decouple.
 
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Yeah I remember the debuts, it was bumpy but they managed well.

It was a very handy platform but it has become too fat and overloaded with unnecessary features that should have been left to the website only. Fate of all software after years of evolution.

Another drawback of the success is the zillion uninteresting games that flood their catalogue. I never browse it anymore.

We yet have to see if Amazon can become a serious competitor with Twitch/Vapor.
 
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My steam profile says 15 years of service, so good to know steam is around 20 years old. I joined steam 5 years after it started then. Kinda surprised it took that long for me to join steam.
 
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I resisted Steam for a while. I was put off by having to have an intermediary between myself and the content I purchased. And also the technical horror stories.

But I eventually caved at the end of 2008; and so began my habit of buying games and not playing them. Of the following first titles purchased, I only 'finished' one.

P5SWk9X.png
 
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I was in the depths of Everquest when this all happened, I do remember people talking about it but I was otherwise occupied, game-wise. It would be another three years or so before I got my first game that required Steam.
 
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Drithius said:
I resisted Steam for a while. I was put off by having to have an intermediary between myself and the content I purchased. And also the technical horror stories.

But I eventually caved at the end of 2008; and so began my habit of buying games and not playing them. Of the following first titles purchased, I only 'finished' one.

P5SWk9X.png
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Speaking of the games on that list, where the hell is C&C Generals on Steam? And why is it only on Origin?
 
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I'm not able to look just now, but i think I only got Steam when Oblivion went to it after Games for Windows failed.
 
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Drithius said:
I resisted Steam for a while. I was put off by having to have an intermediary between myself and the content I purchased. And also the technical horror stories.

But I eventually caved at the end of 2008; and so began my habit of buying games and not playing them. Of the following first titles purchased, I only 'finished' one.

P5SWk9X.png
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Hopefully the one game you finished from the list was Stalker. :cool:

If not, I would recommend it.
 
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I have a day 1 Steam account (18 years of service) because I was an avid Counter-Strike player back in the day and like everyone back then we hated the forced client with a burning passion :biggrin: . The launch was a complete shitshow and it literally took years before Steam became somewhat usable/acceptable.

In fact, the turnaround point was the Steam sales. Steam became everyone’s best friend when they started their sales events including those tasty 80%/90% off flash sales. That’s when public opinion suddenly swayed from Steam being unnecessary DRM garbage to Steam becoming the most popular Store/Client on PC.
 
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Since we're in the Nostalgia Session: :)

I joined Steam in 2011 and I did it so only because I bought a physical copy of Sid Meier's Civilization V and, yet, the Installation instructions said:

You will be prompted during the installation to install Steam if you do not have it installed, and then it will ask you to login to your Steam account.

At the time I had already heard about Steam but I never cared to install it. So when the game installation prompted me to log in my Steam account I was like:

"Great! Now I'm required to install an unwanted third-party program if I wanna play the legit, physical copy of the game I just purchased. DAMN YOU!!" :furious:

And so I did. I had to. Even not wanting it. But you wanna know what? After the initial rage, I got used to Steam, and even started to like it.

Below are my first purchases made on the platform:

xEV2LMR.png


For a long of time, Civ V was the game I clocked most hours on Steam.
 
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Arkadia7 said:
My steam profile says 15 years of service, so good to know steam is around 20 years old. I joined steam 5 years after it started then. Kinda surprised it took that long for me to join steam.
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It didn't. Steam was announced 20 years ago. It took another year or two before it showed up.

17 years here. I think my first game was Dark Messiah of Might & Magic. There're a few years that aren't on the purchase record anymore.

And yeah, I agree that it was the Steam Sales that really turned everything around. That, and the fact that the games were still there TO put on sale. Most of those games being put on sale weren't even on the brick & mortal shelves anymore.
 
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