The largest and most popular digital gaming platform is Steam. Other than Steam games, you can also interact with your friends, read and write guides, broadcast games, and so much more.
Is Steam just a digital gaming library? Definitely not. It has managed to succeed in building an amazing community, building a huge market for trading items and cards, and also showing its prowess in hardware with the Steamdeck.
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But where exactly did Steam begin?
The Origins of Steam
In 2002, Valve Corporation, the creators of games and engines like Half-Life, Counter-Strike, GoldSrc, etc., decided to build their own distribution platform.
Valve was founded by Mike Harrington and Gabe Newell, often known as GabeN or Lord Gaben, in the community. According to Valve Corporation, the main objective of Steam was to address the massive problem of piracy in the gaming industry.
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These piracy practices resulted in a huge loss for game developers and game publishers. Valve saw a great opportunity to both cater for these developers and, at the same time, end piracy.
Back when CDs and DVDs were popularly used to install games, Steam was the pioneer when it came to digital distribution. This not only eliminated the need for physical copies and made the lives of developers easier, but also opened up the global market for both gamers and game developers.
A game platform this revolutionary couldn’t stop with just these features, right?
Advantages and Features of Steam
Let us have a look at a few advantages and features of Steam
Cloud Storage
Steam offers a wide range of video games and software, all stored in the cloud. Allowing you to access all your video games, saved files, and configurations no matter where you are. This completely eliminated the hassle of remembering your game settings and configurations, helping you have the same experience on any PC.
This also made the lives of eSports players easier, as they have to travel across the world to play LAN tournaments.
Friends List
Steam allows you to add friends and play multiplayer games with them. Had a great time playing with a good random teammate in a multiplayer Steam game? Just send them a friend request and play together later. More Steam friends would be great in fact.
You can communicate with your friends on Steam either through text or voice chat. You can also broadcast your game to your friends or watch your friend’s broadcast.
On Steam, you can also trade and gift items, game skins, and games with your friends or other members of the Steam community market.
Steam Community
Can you imagine how huge the Steam community is? Believe it or not, Steam receives a peak concurrent user count of at least 36 million users a day.
This massive player base is what makes the Steam community amazing. Under the community tab, you can share or check out other player’s screenshots, artwork, videos, reviews, and guides. You can also stream your game to the community.
Having trouble while playing a game? Or is there a bug that is not allowing you to play it? Simply go to the game’s discussion page and look for a solution or post your issue for the community to help you out.
Steam Market
In a way, Steam Market single-handedly is what makes Steam the best gaming platform. Steam Market eliminates one of the major problems for gamers, which is not being able to sell or trade your game skins and cosmetics.
On the market, you can buy and sell game skins, trading cards, items, cases, and many more. The market is also pretty easy to understand. List your items or skins at the lowest price so that they will appear on top and will sell quickly if you’re looking to sell them as soon as possible.
In a similar way, when you’re looking to buy an item that is currently not available, bid for the highest amount to get the item as soon as it is available.
Steam codes and Steam gift cards
One of the amazing things about purchasing Steam games is that you don’t always have to get them directly from Steam. The game can also be bought as a Steam code from third-party shops on several other websites. Additionally, Steam and a lot of third-party sellers also sell Steam gift cards, which you can use to add money to your Steam wallet.
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Third-party features and other APIs
Steam allows third-party websites and apps to use their API to provide much-needed data and information to players.
For example, SteamDB, a third-party website focused on Steam database, allows us to see the most played games on Steam, trending games, and details about a particular game, including its price history, app information, and more.
The evolution of Steam among the gaming platforms
From its modest origins as a digital game platform, Steam also expanded into multiple other services, like manufacturing hardware like a Steam Controller and the Steam Deck.
In fact, no other gaming platform has dared to venture into such services and achieve the same success as Steam.
Games like Overwatch 2, Apex Legends, Battlefield 5, and more have their own client, but there must be a reason these games are also published on Steam, right?
The impact of Steam in the world of gaming
Just by looking at the origins of Steam and how it is doing now—from revolutionizing digital copies to building a strong online community, from allowing players to share their mods, maps, and more on the game workshop to encouraging many more indie developers to come forward—Steam has managed to have a huge impact when it comes to the world of gaming.
Steam is as helpful to game developers and game publishers as it is to gamers. Despite the fact that a lot of other gaming platforms have emerged, promising much better compensation to the developers and luring more players with free games and offers, Steam still reigns as the world’s best gaming platform ever.