HAPPY 10TH BIRTHDAY STEAM! (12/9/13)

strafer said:
I remember this Steam. :D

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God, I remember this all too well...
 
Firestorm said:
I wish I had my first account but I think my friend got it VAC-banned so I had to make a new one when TF2 came out.

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Here's to decades more!
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Hahahahha that image is fantastic.

I bought a valve/half-life christmas bundle around holiday 2006 I think, specifically for counter-strike source. It came with half life 1/2/lost coast as well. Registered early 2007, could barely run counter strike well on a piece of hot garbage laptop. Once I built my PC something like 15 months later, it was all over.
 
Here's to many more years!

I hope that many more devs will ports old console games and local multiplayer titles over. Steam in combination with MS 360 controllers was a local Multiplayer revelation for me - next to Nintendo consoles there is no other place for me that manages to be such a convenient place for local MP. Except for one thing:

If they would allow 2 player logins in local MP for stats/achivements/saves for every player it would be a dream come true
for me - I know I'm in a niche/minority here
. It's the one thing where they didn't manage to 1up or have feature parity with the 360.

btw: great OP!
 
I can't believe such a transformative force in gaming and digital media in general is so young. Gabe had some great foresight to get this out in 2003. That would make it contemporaneous to even the iTunes Music Store experiment.

I've been on board since 05. A year after Half-Life 2 I finally had a good enough PC to run it.
 
I started with Steam affter I bought Counter Strike Source in 2006? Either way I remember when everyone proclaimed Steam was just full of 12 year old Americans so I always avoided it until I finally saw the error of my ways and jumped on board.

As primarily a PC gamer all my life it was such a huge, huge thing for me to use Steam and to this day I abide by it totally. In a way it's also a boon since I don't like buying anything that won't register on Steam as I like everything to be in one place haha.

Happy Birthday Steam!
 
So, thinking about the earlyish days of Steam (i.e just post HL2)...

...who here has actually played Ricochet? I've had it sitting on my account - untouched - forever. Maybe that's how we should commemorate this :-)
 
Fantastic opening post. First I hated Steam. Next I tolerated it. Then I liked it. Now it's virtually all I use.

Well played, Valve.
 
Steam didn't let me play Half-Life 2... I had to go for a refund of the "deluxe" edition (it was crap BTW, a huge box with only a t-shirt and the game on it for what I remember).

If someone had told me back then that this thing would become such a pivotal part of my gaming life, I would have punched him.

Happy birthday Steam, keep going.
 
mclem said:
So, thinking about the earlyish days of Steam (i.e just post HL2)...

...who here has actually played Ricochet? I've had it sitting on my account - untouched - forever. Maybe that's how we should commemorate this :-)
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The earliest memory I have of Ricochet was seeing the icon pop up after installing a Half-Life patch. Started it up once, servers were empty, got into one of them to see the map looked mostly like blank space, then never touched it again.

I'm down for a Ricochet revival for the occasion. It'll probably be the most activity it's ever had.
 
Most of us Swedish CS players were pissed at valve for forcing us to download some shit program called "Steam" just so we could keep playing the game we loved. How times have changed.
 
Nekofrog said:
Steam was an absolute NIGHTMARE when it first came out and for a few years after that.
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I remember reading a lot of complaints about it.
I also remember disliking Steam quite a lot when it came out, mostly because i found it pointless and unnecessary at first, but I must say it never gave me technical problems of any kind.
I even bought HL2 and activated it in minutes on the launch day.
Then again, I already had a 10 Mbit/s optic fiber broadband when a lot people I used to know had barely a 56K/ISDN, so I guess that's what spared me a lot of problems (and it's also a reason for a lot of people to remember it probably as a more shitty service than it actually was).

Interestingly enough, I virtually ignored the service for several years (beside using it for HL2 and CS) until I preordered the Orange Boxe. From that moment on, I started a purchase frenzy.

EDIT: it's also worth noting that coming from HL1 and the terrible SIERRA (IN)UTILITIES tied with it, having HL2 tied to Steam didn't look too appealing but it didn't sound so terrible, either.
 
I joined Jan 2006 when I finally bought the HL2+CSS box.

It was a fucking nightmare.

Still not without its flaws but at least it gives cheap games.
 
Fuck. I joined Steam when Half Life 2 launched.

I can't even begin to describe the shit storm that was. It makes the Steam of today that much more remarkable to me.

I had sworn off that service. Now here I am ten years later, loving it. Hahaha.
 
In 10 days I'll get my 10 years of service badge. Been a happy Steam user on the most part. Even the HL2 launch was super smooth for me.

They need to bring back better sales, though. They've been pretty underwhelming since Summer 2012.
 
Congrats steam. You encouraged me to stop pirating games. Now when I see a game I want and o dont want to buy it, I just say "I'll just wait for it to become 5 dollars".
 
Originally signed up in 2007 when I bought Team Fortress 2 but never paid attention to it until Poker Night At The Inventory was released in 2010. From that point on I've been on board and enjoyed every moment of it.
 
FyreWulff said:
People can look it up directly, by the way. There's no benefit to hiding your Steam id

http://steamidfinder.com/

6632 is mine. Back then, people were offering me games I couldn't even run :V

Fucking GeForce MX 440
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You beat me, got 7926. I don't even remember WHY I decided to get steam on the first day. Maybe it was to register my CS and HL codes so I don't have to worry about them being stolen anymore.
 
Indeed, how is Valve planning to celebrate? Huge sale? Free games? Half-Life 3 announcement? Steambox announcement? Steam client overhaul? The possibilities are endless!
 
5 years for me, 21st June 2008. Probably didn't have a PC worth gaming on before that.

Hope they do something interesting for the 10th Birthday, sure they'll have something planned internally.
 
i was in steam on day 1, and i remember when it came out. I actually liked it, but a majority of people absolutely HATED IT.

Mind you counterstrike and tf were about the only games on steam, people hated it for whatever reason
 
InternHertz said:
You beat me, got 7926. I don't even remember WHY I decided to get steam on the first day. Maybe it was to register my CS and HL codes so I don't have to worry about them being stolen anymore.
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I think that might have been part of it for me too. Worry that people would keygen my keys.
 
Like a lot of other folks. If it wasn't for Steam. I wouldn't be a PC gamer.
 
Thanks OP for this gorgeous retrospective of Steam! Also for considering the cons and not only the pros. I joined Steam on the first day of a user ID of somewhat 2xxx, but lost that account because I forgot my data over the years (I went console-only shortly after) :(
Recently I went PC-only again after over a decade with a HTPC/Steambox and couldn't be any happier. The recent Steam Summer Sale was totally AWESOME!
 
Oh god. I remember signing up for the beta the first night. It was chaos. I eventually downloaded cs 1.6b and remember that the entire CT team used shields... because we could.
 
Best gaming platform and ecosystem I've ever used. Here is to many more years. Gaben will show us the way with hats and no announcements of HL3.
 
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