By Ryan Afable
Steam is the most used online game distributor and one of the most loved game distributors. Steam was made by Valve: one of the most appreciated game developers, which has led to the success of Steam as a product.
Steam started in the early 2000s, and when it first came out there was never intent to turn it into a game store. It was just for Valve to make a better place for them to put game updates, anti piracy and anti cheat. Valve was announced on March 22, 2002 at the game developers conference. The Beta test came out that day. Gabe Newell, the CEO of Valve, said, “With the rapid proliferation of broadband connectivity throughout the world, and as gaming and all software developers continue to extend their products’ functionality via the Internet, it became very apparent that a platform for delivering new services and offerings was needed.” Then, Steam had a contract with Sierra Studios to be able to publish their games. It ended up in a rocky situation where Steam sued Sierra and the owner, Vivendi Games, for a breach of contract. Sierra countersued and said he undermined the contract by having an online store front. Steam was fully released on September 12, 2003. In November, 2004, the first high profile game, Half Life 2, was released only on steam. In 2005, Valve contracted many 3rd party games studios to release their games onto Steam.
One of the reasons for Steam’s success is the software itself. Steam is one of the most consumer friendly game stores. One of the outstanding features is how Steam handles their refunds on the website. They say, “You can request a refund for nearly any purchase on Steam—for any reason. Maybe your PC doesn’t meet the hardware requirements; maybe you bought a game by mistake; maybe you played the title for an hour and just didn’t like it. It doesn’t matter. Valve will, upon request via help.steampowered.com, issue a refund for any reason, if the request is made within the required return period, and, in the case of games, if the title has been played for less than two hours.” There is also the Steam sale, which happens very often. You can get many good games for a very cheap price.
Another part of the software is how easy it is to play with other people and to make friends. All you have to do is get their friend code and you can play with your friends. If you want to, you can click shift and tab to use the Steam overview.
Steam has kept its name in the field and it is not going to leave anytime soon, which is a good thing with how good the app is.
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