Steam celebrates 20 years

Steam, one of the world’s most popular and important video game platforms, has celebrated its 20th anniversary in style.

Valve launched Steam worldwide in 2003 as a software dedicated to automatically updating its games. However, its importance has grown to such an extent that it is now one of the most important video game platforms for PC.

Indeed, many may not remember it, or even the new generations may have never seen it, but many years ago, updating a game on PC was a complicated task. Back then, we had to watch for game updates, go to the official website, download the update, and install it manually. Moreover, with the simple fact of the slow Internet connections of that time, this was a task that, in many cases, took several days.

Steam – Birth

To simplify the process of updating games, Valve decided to create a new platform called Steam. This platform arrived in the world of video games on September 12, 2003, and yesterday, it was in the news as it celebrated 20 years since its official launch. Moreover, in these two decades, many of us have witnessed the growth and evolution of both Steam and Valve.

Happy 20th birthday to us! 🎂 And thank you to all of you – Steam would be nothing without you. In celebration, today we brought back the green, put together a little walk through memory lane, and have sticker gifts for all! Thank you again 💖https://t.co/AgacMON2oR pic.twitter.com/xrC4TuWRmx

— Steam (@Steam) September 12, 2023

Evolution of Steam

Steam began its history in 2002 when Valve announced it at the Games Developers Conference and, from that moment, began a beta in which players could test some of the features of this new platform.

Similarly, this platform was intended for video games such as Day of Defeat, Half-Life, or Counter-Strike. At that time, Steam was used to search for automatic updates of the games and to search, find, and enter servers to play online without the need to open the games.

With this, we realized that Valve’s bet was clear, to have an exclusive platform for certain players, and even Half-Life 2 arrived a year later on Steam exclusively for PC. HL2 was the first game to be sold on Steam, and, in addition, to be able to play it, Steam had to be installed. On the other hand, it also began to open up the possibilities of expanding to third-party games, with the mission of easily updating them from Steam.

However, it is no secret that Steam is what it is today, thanks to the transition from an update program to a digital store. In the same way, different features of the application, such as the community tab, game tutorials, workshops, and much more, are also influential.

Steam Deck and Steam Link

In addition, Steam has also grown far beyond the Software since Valve decided to create a Hardware dedicated to the games of its platform, the Steam Deck.

This portable device works to play a large number of titles that, without a doubt, make us take our PC experience wherever we go.

On the other hand, there is also the Steam Link, a way to play your favorite Steam video games via Streaming.

Like this, we have seen a lot more from Valve and Steam over the 20 years of the platform’s life. As a result, Valve’s Software has become an indispensable platform for PC gamers, and, in addition, this year, it has broken its record of users connected at the same time (33.5 million) and its record of simultaneous players, 10,130,965.

Header: Valve