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Steam is the flagship gaming platform of the Valve Corporation, and is also the largest such platform currently available, with over 10 million concurrent users at any given time. Steam was intended to replace the World Opponent Network (WON), a multiplayer framework and authentication system used by Valve for its games up to that point. It was developed under the codenames Grid and Gazelle and revealed at the Game Developers Conference 2002. It was released September 12, 2003 after a beta testing period, and was used to provide multiplayer functionality,  support, anti-cheat and updates to Valve games, as well as allow users to purchase and install Valve games online. World Opponent Network remained active until July 31 of 2004, at which point all games would need to be updated to play on Steam. This was an unpopular move, especially among players of Counter-Strike version 1.5, who would need to update to version 1.6. Many players had complaints about version 1.6, including, “long load times, performance hits, and game crashes when using Steam” (Golze 2004). Later that year on November 16 was the release of the highly-anticipated Half-Life 2, which required players to install Steam to perform one-time authentication. This caused massive disruption to Steam servers, which “simply weren’t ready for the flood of users trying to play the game at launch” (Plunkett 2013) meaning many were unable to play the game for days. The service was unpopular among many for these reasons. In 2005, Steam began to sell third-party games, and by 2008 many large companies began selling on the Steam storefront. As an open digital distribution storefront, Steam sells a wide variety of games for many distinct audiences, with a sales cut of 30%. This variety includes games ranging from the kid-friendly, the mainstream and the mildly pornographic. However, Steam has controls that default to hiding sexual or extremely violent content site-wide. Steam also sells non-game software, mostly to do with game development and related disciplines, as well as desktop customization and strangely, even an estate planner. Movies can also be purchased through Steam. With this very broad offering of products comes a very broad audience, with a legal minimum age of 13. Steam’s largest user base (based on download quantities) is the Chinese market, where users frequently use Virtual Private Networks to bypass local Internet censorship of the main Steam site. This is followed closely by the United States. Steam reaches all corners of the planet, with users in Greenland, Somalia and South Sudan to name a few. In addition, hardware surveys show that most users use Intel processors and Nvidia graphics; both of these are widely considered to be the best-performing choices of hardware. Despite the revenue stream from third-party titles, “mods,” which are user-created modifications to games, were an important part of Steam’s purpose from the beginning. Total conversions in particular are highly valued and can be easily distributed via Steam’s storefront like any other game. This stems from Valve’s embrace of the amateur development community, and their belief that this form of online distribution would, “create a smoother transition between the amateur world and the professional world” (Au 2002). Steam also offers a distribution system for simpler mods via the Steam Workshop, fully introduced in February 2002 for the game Skyrim. It can be integrated by third-party developers into their own games. Steam has other multiplayer and social features that can be used by third-parties on the platform. One multiplayer feature is VAC, or Valve Anti-Cheat, Steam’s own anti-cheat engine. It is best well known for enacting delayed permanent bans only on those who have been fully confirmed to be cheating, and is the subject of endless ban appeals from alleged false-positives. Steam’s main social features stem from the Steam Community, which allows for, among other things, the sharing of screenshots, artwork, as well as public forums, chatrooms, live-streaming, and even a user-driven market for in-game items. Each game has its own community hub, which has developer-appointed moderators, supplemented by Steam-wide moderators. Naturally, due to the variety of games on Steam, each hub is effectively an entirely different community to others. Through their streaming services, Steam also provides users the means to view various e-sports not only on their platform, but also in games as a traditional spectator in a multiplayer game. Steam provides a platform for a central inventory of in-game items for accounts, which can be traded between users or sold on the user-driven community market, which takes a 15% cut from all transactions. Common items include keys, which are items required to open “crates,” effectively lootboxes. Keys are frequently used as a standard trading currency on Steam, along with other, arbitrarily valued items. Steam also provides modes for use on a television or with Virtual Reality displays, to provide users with lots of options on how to use the software. Recently, the Epic Games Launcher platform by rival company Epic Games has been threatening Steam’s market share, with a focus on the game developers rather than user options. Steam has also been under fire from political bodies such as the European Union over market regulations and consumer protections. However, Steam has already entrenched itself over the past 17 years as an industry powerhouse used by millions. One could say that it’s too big to fail, but it is never certain.

Works cited

Au, Wagner James. “Triumph of the mod.” Salon, 16 Apr. 2002, www.salon.com/2002/04/16/modding. Accessed 4 February 2020.

Bonifacic, Igor. “French court rules Steam games must be able to be resold.” Engadget, 19 Sept. 2019, www.engadget.com/2019/09/19/french-court-valve-steam-resold. Accessed 6 February 2020.

Golze, Benjamin. “Valve to shut down WON servers.” Gamespot, 15 Jul. 2004, www.gamespot.com/articles/valve-to-shut-down-won-servers/1100-6102754. Accessed 5 February 2020.

Plunkett, Luke. “Steam Is 10 Today. Remember When It Sucked?” Kotaku, 12 Sept. 2013, kotaku.com/steam-is-10-today-remember-when-it-sucked-1297594444. Accessed 4 February 2020. Archived 15 August 2017, web.archive.org/web/20170815031613/http:/kotaku.com/steam-is-10-today-remember-when-it-sucked-1297594444

Steam Community. Valve Corporation, steamcommunity.com. Accessed 6 February 2020.

“Steam & Game Stats.” Steam Store, store.steampowered.com/stats/. Accessed 4 February 2020.

Ucciferri, Frannie.”Parents’ Ultimate Guide to Steam.” Common Sense Media, www.commonsensemedia.org/blog/parents-ultimate-guide-to-steam. Accessed 6 February 2020.

Valve. Valve: Handbook for New Employees. E-book, Valve Corporation, 2012.