Article: A History of Steam
The history of PC gaming could be split into the history of gaming before Steam, and afterwards. We love Steam very much, but it wasn’t that long ago that the thought of having to use the gaming client was met with resistance and complaint. Originally brought out to be the foundation for Half Life 2 and the all the goodies that came with buying it, many complained that Steam was a thinly disguised DRM program in the making; a system that would force people to have to activate keys online and be constantly connected if they ever wanted to play their games.
They weren’t that far off the truth. Playing video games through Steam was marred by an interface that stole processing power like it was sweets. Running a video game required the game to talk with the Steam server first, meaning the user had to be online to pass information back and forth. Rather than this being a simple quick process, 56k users found themselves having to wait the past part of 5 to 10 minutes before finally getting to play the game they wanted. Offline mode existed but was effectively useless as it still required the user to be online for the activation. After that the user could disconnect, but the timely process of going on and offline meant it wasn’t recommended.
The argument of course was that 56k was on the way out, replaced by the growing infrastructure of high speed broadband (high speed to the power of 512k!) and so the need to stay online was something the majority of people using Steam could do. There were other problems though as well; downloading Half Life 2 was a disaster as everyone at the same time attempted to download it. The rule of thumb for all Internet traffic of course is, if tens of thousands of people attempt to access your server to download something, you’re going to see your server go up in flames.
Steam prevailed though and continued, expanding its offering of games available on the market and continuing its ability to distribute games online. In a fairly short space of time Steam started to offer none Valve games, indie works and other objects of interest for the gamer. The community started to grow and so Steam started offering community based features and groups for multiplayer games in order for people to get together to play. Bugs ironed out, the offline system improved, the library fixed, anti-Steam consumers soon found their complaints removed, their arguments void.
It wasn’t long that others wanted a piece of the online distribution pie. Steam established itself very early, Valve brilliantly seeing into the future that the ability to download full games online and have them in one tidy client was the future of PC gaming. By the time EA Store, Gametap and others appeared, Steam was already a fully working powerhouse, that had moved from a program that could be used every once in a while to access games, to a primary gaming centre that sat happily on every PC’s taskbar and didn’t interrupt or chew processing power. Complaints about being constantly online started to decrease, perhaps as Valve expected, as more and more people moved on from 56k to DSL.
It wasn’t surprising therefore that other online distrubution clients found it difficult to keep up; they had to deal with the bugs and problems Steam dealt with years ago. They were well behind in the race. Eventually competition became cooperation. EA, Ubisoft, Activision, Atari, almost every major game publisher started to put there games onto the Steam market. After all, if it works, why try something different? Steam became not only a Valve distribution client, but the distribution client to use for PC gaming needs.
It’s not all rosey however. If you’ve walked into any game store as of late you’ll likely find the PC gaming section shoved into a dark recess somewhere in the back of the shop. It reminds of the time when the Dreamcast was on its last legs, and you had to crawl to the back of the shop to find the game you want, and usually wouldn’t be able to because the stock was so small. Section of games stores today for the PC give a smattering of new games mixed in with £3 “classics” that your gran would give you, such as Horse Riding Tycoon 4 (8/10!) or Random Generic RPG 2 (3/10). The result of Steam is that the retail market for the PC is becoming smaller (although it should be noted that the online market remains comfortably the same). The other problem I find is I like the neatness of Steam. The ability to find my gaming library through it, and use in game chat software and features, means I want all my games to run through Steam. Sadly however it’s still not that easy to do, and the result is that I can have games on and off Steam, muddled in my folders and library.
So what’s the future for Steam? With the continued rise of community interaction being created by the likes of social websites such as Facebook, the future is likely to be one involving even more community. The recent UI update for Steam has removed the chunkiness of the client and made it more streamline in market and community interaction, so it seems likely that the ability to make multiplayer parties like the ones seen in Xbox Live aren’t that far off. More games, more sales, more content is the hallmark of Steam, with better integration and games library access for all games installed onto your computer system. Valve has become the powerhouse of online distribution and will likely to continue this for years to come. Things look very rosey indeed.
Anyway! Onward now to buying more games in Steam’s massive weekly sale! My poor wallet…
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