Steam, the digital PC showcase, was officially released to the public today 18 years ago, on September 12, 2003. I didn’t realize how old Steam was and, by extension, how old I am. I guess time passes when you buy, download, and install a bunch of games that you’ll never end up playing.
When Valve was first launched Steam, people, including some of my friends at the time, were not very happy about it. The idea of having to register a game over the internet, even a game you bought at a record store, didn’t turn out well for people. But over time, as Valve improved service, offered third-party games, and began making seasonal sales, people kept warming up. As of May 2007, it had about 13 million users. As of January 2021, it has over 120 million active users each month.
When it was released in 2003, it was a bit disastrous. The servers collapsed. Players couldn’t log in and there wasn’t much to find when you did, plus some Valve titles and a terrible looking user interface. Things have improved since then.
The first game that required Steam was Valve’s own sequel, Half-Life 2. It was released in 2004. The following year, Valve began downsizing with external publishers to bring the first non-valve games into service. The first third-party game released on Steam was Kung Fu cloth 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 a low price of $ 1.
In May 2007 there were around 150 digital games available for purchase on Steam. Earlier this year, Steam got 50 games. It is estimated that from 2018 every year between 8,000 and 10,000 new games will be uploaded to the storefront.
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I dug through my Steam library and, as far as I know, based on my memories and release dates, the first games I bought on Steam were Day of the source of defeat i Half-Life 2. This seems very correct.
Today, Steam could face competition from Epic and other publisher stores, but it’s still easily the most popular and popular way for most PC gamers to get new games. But in 2003, Steam seemed like a weird experiment like that Counter-Strike i Half life devs.