I still remember being skeptical af to the idea that I would give them money and all I got was a digital promise that they would look after my copy of half life and Cs. Years lateds, I’ve lost or destroyed almost all my physical media, but still have that steam account.
True, but lord Gabe is aging, and I’m not sure what will happen once he’s gone. If Steam falls to greed, screwing up it’s user base and developer base as so many others before it, then I imagine a wave of pirates of significant proportions will emerge.
I can’t really imagine how the PC gaming world would look today without steam.
And to think that everybody was pissed as hell when Steam first got introduced with HL2 and CS…how far we’ve come haha.
Rightfully pissed, too. Installing HL2 was a goddamned nightmare.
Steam was so rough at launch. I registered at 7:50 pm on launch day but the I didn’t play counter strike that day.
Oh my God, yeah. I bought HL2 on news years day coming with a massive hangover and just wanted to nurse it with a new game.
Worst gaming experience ever, until I finally got into the game the next day.
I remember the friends list basically being nonfunctional.
How far Steam has come…
I’m still sad that steamingpileofshit.com finally got killed. I think within the last year or two.
Used to redirect to steam.com since the old days when everybody hated Steam lol. It’s hugely improved now and I love everything that GabeN has done for the PC gaming community; Steam being a huge part of it.
But I still laugh a bit at the old days.
Man it was so controversial at the time. I was on USENET gaming groups and there were a few people that worked complaining about Steam DRM into every conversation.
I found it, it was comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action, a poster named John Lewis: https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action/c/EiQO3AOHanE/m/_DO3FqVFEWwJ
I can’t believe USENET is still active and I still recognize some of the names on new posts. Spalls Hurgenson for one.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
It’s pretty hard to believe that it was 20 years ago that Steam arrived, and with it that glorious green interface.
They weren’t even close to being the first digital store to provide games, but requiring Steam to run Half-Life 2 regardless of digital purchase or a boxed copy was likely the defining moment that helped push it to success for Valve.
This was likely my own introduction to Steam as well, back in the day were my PC could only just about run Half-Life 2 when you had long loading screens between sections.
Pictured - Steam homepage back in 2004 after Half-Life 2 released
Not everything Valve has tried went well like the original Steam Machines, and killing off their ambitions for non-gaming video content but they keep on trying and expanding and it seems there’s really no stopping it.
Naturally, without Steam and Valve, Linux gaming wouldn’t be where it is today so we’re doubly thankful for its existence.
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