Valve’s Steam digital store turns 18 today

Steam, the digital storefront for PCs, officially launched to the public 18 years ago today, September 12, 2003. I hadn’t realized how old Steam was and, by extension, how old I was. . I guess time flies when you buy, download, and install a bunch of games you’ll never play.

When Valve first launched To smoke, people, including a few of my friends at the time, weren’t too happy with it. The idea of ​​having to record a game over the Internet, even a game you bought in a store to a disc, did not suit people. But over time, as Valve improved service, offered third-party games, and started to have seasonal sales, people got used to it. As of May 2007, it had nearly 13 million users. As of January 2021, it had over 120 million monthly active users.

When it was launched in 2003, it was a bit of a disaster. The servers collapsed. Players couldn’t log in and there wasn’t much to find when you did other than a few Valve titles and a terrible user interface. Things have improved since.

The first game to require Steam was Valve’s mega-sequel, Half Life 2. It was released in 2004. The following year, Valve began making deals with third-party publishers. to bring the first non-Valve games to service. The first third-party game released on Steam was Kung Fu Rag Doll. It is still available in 2021. It is a strange fighting game that was created by some developers of Lionhead (Fable). You can buy it today for the low price of $ 1.

In May 2007, there was approximately 150 digital games available for purchase on Steam. Earlier this year, Steam reached 50,000 games. It is estimated that each year since 2018, between 8,000 and 10,000 new games are downloaded to the storefront.

I went to dig through my Steam library and as far as I can tell from my recollection and release dates the very first games I bought on Steam were Source of the day of defeat and Half Life 2. Sounds pretty much right.

Today, Steam may face competition from Epic and other publisher stores, but it’s still the biggest and most popular way for most PC gamers to get new games. . But in 2003, Steam seemed like a strange experience on the part of these Counter strike and Half-life developers.