Steam has turned 15 years
Steam, Valve's digital distribution platform, debuted on September 11, 2003 . Today your client covers social network services, streaming video, communities, saved in the cloud and many other functions that have been added in recent years
Before Steam, Valve had problems updating his games, such as Counter-Strike , since many players did not connect every day. Steam instead offered automatic updates and improvements in anti-piracy measures. The growth in high-speed connections in the early 2000s was also key for Valve decided to bet on this distribution.
Initially Valve contacted several companies to develop their client, such as Microsoft, Yahoo! or RealNetworks, but they all rejected the idea. In 2002 the beta was released, and to demonstrate the integration a special version of Impossible Creatures was created by Relic Entertainment and it was associated with AT & T, Acer or GameSpy. Day of Defeat was the first Steam mod.
Steam is launched
On September 11, 2003 is officially released , being mandatory for Counter-Strike version 1.6, although its function was only the distribution of patches.
Soon after, Valve would start negotiating with various publishers and independent developers to sell their games , such as Rag Doll Kung Fu and Darwinia . Half-Life 2 was the first game that required the installation of the client to work, even in the physical versions. The connection problems - which had also suffered Counter-Strike in its premiere - caused controversy among the players, reluctant to Steam.
Today Steam has more than 150 million registered accounts and peaks of up to 18.5 million players simultaneously connected. In 2013 it reached 75% of the PC market , and although today there are more alternatives that threaten this importance, in the case of GOG or the publishers' own stores -EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard, Microsoft-, it is still key to the success of the majority of releases.
