When was steam released

It had also, very quietly, improved its quality of service to the point where it was, in online gaming terms, almost bulletproof. Where Half-Life 2's launch was a disaster, by , the thought of the same thing happening for Modern Warfare's release seemed impossible. And it had only been three years! By , a service begun as a way to patch online shooters had become a marketplace.

From there, you know the rest. Steam is the best and worst thing to happen to gaming. It leaves me feeling conflicted. Here's a picture of some food I cooked. The A. Total Recall. By Luke Plunkett. Release Process. Overview The release of your product is mostly in your hands, though Valve will need to review and approve your product before release.

You can pick the date that it should release and you can configure most features yourself. The general process for launching your product on Steam is displayed at the top of your product landing page in Steamworks.

Complete Release Checklists There are two checklists, one part of the checklist is for your store page and one part is for your product build and configuration. You can view your checklist on the right-hand side of the app landing page. The then-novel concept of digital sales is born, hinting at what was to come. Free demos and HD videos join the catalogue.

With almost games available, the issue of visibility starts to rear its head. A proper search functionality, integration of Metacritic ratings, and filters like Top Sellers and New Releases make the storefront a whole lot more usable. The addition of community forums is Steam recognizing its user base as an asset like any other.

Within the Steam client itself, the debut of the Steam Community platform brings with it many crucial features, including stat-tracking, friends lists, community groups, and voice chat.

Browse-by-genre links and a greater focus on the New Releases list make keeping track of Steam's ever-expanding catalogue slightly easier. Meanwhile, the Spotlight feature, the image slideshow, and the large banner ad grant select games prime exposure to Steam's million-strong user base. On the software front, the rollout of Steam Cloud makes it significantly easier to play the same game across multiple computers, providing automatic synchronization of game saves, key bindings, and configuration settings.

Discounts are now presented as percentages, making it significantly easier to spot a bargain. The Steam Stats activity graph reminds visitors just how big Steam is getting, while the addition of Mac games marks Steam's first push to expand beyond the Windows PC market. With its library growing to over 1, titles, Steam introduces a recommendation widget to simplify discovery and combat the 'too many games' conundrum.

Oh, to be young and naive! In response to an increase in account fraud, Valve deploys Steam Guard, providing two-step login protection first via email, then later through the Steam mobile app. EricS has an enormous game library of over 6, games. Although they own a lot of games, EricS has only played for total hours. Their top three games are Team Fortress 2 with games played , Job Simulator with 30 hours played , and Rec Room with 26 hours played.

They are a member of Valve and have played over games. They also have over 50 hours played on SteamVR. Taylor Sherman is a Valve employee with one of the first Steam accounts.

Compared to some of the other employee accounts, Taylor has not played much and logged total hours. The Steam account owned by user ChrisB is the first early account to explicitly state that they are not a Valve employee nor do they work in a support capacity.

Gregori is another Valve employee who actively enjoys playing games on the Steam platform. They have played more than games and logged more than 1, total hours.