The History of Steam

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Mention Steam to any gamer today and there is nobody that does not know what it is. There is plenty of competition in the market, sure, but Steam has still managed to grow so large that it today almost has become synonymous with gaming - at least on PC. Just the fact that the yearly Steam-sale is such an important date for gamers says everything. But the fact is that Steam's history has not been an straight journey to the hearts of gamers. On the contrary - for starters there where few who even understood why we would even need such a service that Steam was trying to offer.

Counter-Strike as an Model

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To understand the gaming-platforms gigantic penetrative power we need to go back in time to the fall of 1998. The developer Valve has just launched Half-Life. A title that quickly became the most praised title of the year, but it was mostly what came after that made Half-Life historical. The years after its launch the community would grow larger and larger, with many player-created mods as an result. Here we can find Day of Defeat, Deathmatch Classic and Richochet. And then we also had the mod Counter-Strike, created by the two developers Minh Le and Jess Cliffe.

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Valves Half-Life quickly becomes a huge success - and gets a huge range of fans.

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And it's Counter-Strike that is the important title in this articles perspective. The game becomes increasingly popular, but because it lacks a common platform it's hard to update the game - a pretty big obstacle because Counter-Strike - at the same time - would demand the latest update to be able to play online.

It because of this reason that Valve then introduces it's newly produced service Steam during the fall of 2002, with the platform launching just the year after. The goal is to gather all their companies games and mods on a common platform to be able to quickly execute updates and patches.

Gamers Outcry

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Its actually not until Half-Life 2 that Valve made players use Steam to play the game. An obvious feature of today, but in autumn 2004 it led to a massive public outcry. Not only do you have to be connected to Steam in order to start the game, you also have to be connected to a platform that is buggy and crashing every five minutes. Drm-protection soon became a mocked term in the gaming world.

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Today Steam holds games from all different kind of developers, and in all different kind of genres.

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However, the criticism is nothing that prevented Valve from continuing to force people using Steam, and soon Valve would begin selling games through the new platform. Then it goes fast. In 2005, the company terminates the first agreements with third party manufacturers, and thus other titles than Valve's own became available through Steam. Once Steam was introduced several features we now take for granted were released - such as the Steam Community, which allows players to create gaming-groups.

More Features are Introduced

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Over the years that follow, we got more features rolling out to create the Steam we know today. 2008 made it easier to keep track of the growing game library, including the chance to filter between different genres. Now we also got Steam Cloud, which makes it easier to play games on more than one computer. The Steam Workshop was also introduced, a tool that allowed user-created material to be available on Steam.

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Steams store as it looks today.

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But perhaps one of the most important introductions in recent years for Steam was Early Access. This feature appeared the first time in 2013, and thus we could try the games even though they are not yet ready for launch. It may not sound like a big deal, but for countless smaller developers, it means that you now have a big platform to use to market their game before it's finished. Valve also presented Greenlight with a clear focus on the indie market, although that part hardly worked optimally (today it has been replaced by Steam Direct).

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Zombie Game Day Z belongs to the titles that have made great success through Early Access.

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Competitors Are Starting To Pop Up

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As Steam grew ever more, competitors were also starting to snap on to Valve's success story. 2011 Electronic Arts introduced its own interpretation of Steam with a store called Origin, and soon more and more developers try to grab a piece of the cake. Today, almost every major game publisher has its own name for its own store, and there are also a variety of Steam-like platforms out there that can be used.

Today, the service is still by far the biggest, but competitors are constantly trying to catch up by offering features that Steam users have long been screaming over. Good Old Games, for example, bets on offering games without drm protection and opponents like Itch.io offers users the opportunity to sell their digital games to an wide market.

Exactly what power factor Steam will provide for another ten or twenty years in the gaming arena is difficult to speculate on. Maybe it will eventually be overtaken by nimble competitors? Or perhaps Steam grows so big that there is no longer any meaning to compete with the platform?

However, what is easy to conclude is that Valve has forever changed the way we play and buy games.

The Controversy's

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Electronic Arts and Valve has not always benefited equally when it comes to Steam. Nowadays, Electronic Arts has its own gaming platform.

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Steam has hardly been free from controversies. In addition to the Half-Life 2 incident, I would mention that Electronic Arts once again refused to release Battlefield 3 on Steam. The official explanation was that EA thought it was too difficult to update their titles via Steam, but the actual reason is said that Valve simply took too much of the sales-profit from EA.

In addition, there was also a conflict between Valve and the Australian government earlier this year. The Supreme Court demanded Valve for millions because it was unable to do refunds via Steam. For a few years back, it's actually possible to make refunds, but only if you've played a maximum of two hours of the game and bought it within 14 days. Which in my opinion feels reasonable enough.

The Failed Hardware Initiatives

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Cool idea or pure madness, we asked ourselves when we tested the Steam Controller - and inclined to the latter.

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All Valve touches hardly becomes gold, which we have seen several examples of over the years. Just a few years ago, most were convinced that Valve would try to compete with Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo about occupying gamers space in the living room. Steam Machine and Steam Controller were clear indications of this, but both are virtually dead and buried today.

Last year, Valve also collapsed with HTC and attempted to enter the virtual reality market. The VR headset Vive may not have been a smash hit, but it is perhaps not the time to write its obituary just yet.

The Numbers

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Dota 2 is usually the most played game on Steam.

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• 66 percent: So much is the average price cut during Steam Summer Sale's.

• 80 percent: The percentage of digital sales of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings coming from Steam.

• 7: Number of games available on Steam 2004.

• 11 180: Number of games available at Steam at the end of 2016.

• 2010: The year when Steam is launching for OS X.

• 67,000,000: So many active players Steam has every month.

• 1 291 328: Number of players Dota 2 has in March 2016. It is the highest number of players at the same time for an individual game on Steam.

Sources

1. https://venturebeat.com/2017/05/03/dayzs-is-finally-close-to-beta-but-the-survival-battleground-has-shifted-since-2014/
2. https://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2013/12/20/ea-sued-over-battlefield-4-disaster-chinese-state-media-piles-on/#33a0e8795aba
3. https://thegadgetflow.com/portfolio/steam-controller-hi-fi-game-controller/
4. http://www.ebay.com/itm/50-Steam-Card-50-USD-Prepaid-Card-US-dollar-Code-Steam-Wallet-Key-USA-/201961670402
5. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0239023/mediaviewer/rm3688118272
6. https://amiageekblog.wordpress.com/2014/12/31/be-water-my-friend/

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