It’s almost hard to believe that just a few years ago “Steam” was almost a swearword amongst gamers. Launched by Valve in 2003, Steam faced numerous teething problems. Gamers did not like the idea of an application which wanted them connected to the internet in order to play games, but Valve was able to coax roughly 200,000 gamers to the service with the Counter-Strike 1.6 beta.
In 2005 the first third party games started to appear on Steam, and Valve announced that it was starting to show a profit. At this time, the PC game market was dominated by retail sales, but because of Steam’s higher profit margins, it was able to do well even on minimal market share.
2007 was a big year for Steam, with the likes of The Orange Box, Call of Duty 4 and STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl joining 147 other titles on Steam. Valve announced in 2007 that Steam had hit 13 million accounts.
Modern Warfare 2 represented another massive step for Steam, as Steam was compulsory for those wanting to play it. Valve managed to build on a steady influx of gamers thanks in no small part to the now famous Steam Specials, which represent one of the greatest things about modern PC gaming.
Valve started Steam in order to provide its users with an easy to use patching platform for its games. In less than ten years it has become the largest digital games distributor in the world, and is a cornerstone in PC gaming.
A reddit user has posted a screen shot taken in 2004 showing what Steam looked like back then.
Steam in 2004
Steam in 2006
Steam in 2011
Today Steam is available in 21 different languages, includes built in community functionality, anti-cheat software, and is compatible with Max OS X as well as Windows. Steamworks also integrates with the PlayStation Network (when it’s functional – lol), and serves over 6 million users on a daily basis. Valve is now worth between $2-$4 billion, and consists of just 250 employees.
How do you feel about Steam in 2011?
What Steam looked like 5 years ago << Discuss Steam in the forums
Loading ...
