Why and how did Steam get so big?

A

Alphahawk

Member
Steam is essentially the Amazon.com of digital distribution at this point, there's no arguing that. What I want to know is how did they become so big. Was it because it was forced on us with Half Life 2? Possibly, but I don't think that one game did it. Other games have tried and failed to force a digital distribution on it. Was it all the sales? That's possible and I'm kind of inclined to believe that this was the tipping point for a lot of people.

Anyway what's Gaf's hypothesis?
 
xemumanic

xemumanic

Member
It was a lot of things over time, but I think the Steam sales were a major catalyst. Steam was the platform of choice before that though.
 
Yoshichan

Yoshichan

And they made him a Lord of Cinder. Not for virtue, but for might. Such is a lord, I suppose. But here I ask. Do we have a sodding chance?
They fixed the friends-tab after being in coma for 10 (?) years.
 
K

KuwabaraTheMan

Banned
A combination of things, including the convenience factor and sales. Steam allows people to obtain games easily and without much fuss, and the sales are a really big attraction which allow people to get games for crazy prices.

Plus, you have the fact that those things have lead to Steam becoming ubiquitous with PC gaming in general. Because Steam became popular, it continues to become more popular as the majority of games become available on Steam and Steam just becomes part of the public consciousness for PC gaming.
 
R

RedSwirl

Junior Member
1) It's creators seem to be genuinely interested in the general well-being of the PC platform and consumers, and not just getting a return on investment. Or at the very least Valve's business model is based on the assumption that customers will use a service if you make it as convenient as possible, and add as much value to it as possible.

2) Valve tries to be consistently ahead of the curve in terms of features and updates. Functionality-wise Steam is a moving target everyone else is having to catch up to.
 
D

diggmcbadass

Member
Sales. And it was pretty much the first download store where buying and installing your game was a one click affair. I Was an early adopter of downloads only, and other services had draconian ways of downloading and successfully activating your games. Some got better over time. The others are no longer in business.
 
S

Sober

Member
xemumanic said:
It was a lot of things over time, but I think the Steam sales were a major catalyst. Steam was the platform of choice before that though.
Click to expand...
Well, they had some games but they really sold it with the Orange Box in 07, then they continued with that momentum.

edit: ^^^ goddamn it
 
1

10k

Banned
Steam got big around 2006 for me. Half-Life 2, CSS, and the Orange Box started it. The huge sales blew it up into what it is today.
 
G

Gorillaz

Member
to keep it short and simple

Half life 2 was the trojan horse and through competitive pricing such as steam sales they built up loyalty

It took AWHILE tho for that too happen. I think alot of people forgot how much shit they got during the early days.
 
S

SneakyStephan

Banned
Convenient, sales and community features like the steam workshop

Also there was and still is no competition on the client side, there's plenty of competition for online stores though (thankfully)

Steam was SHIT for the first few years and noone liked it
At least it got better, unlike EADM
 
S

Somnid

Member
Well it initially sucked but the idea was very forward in terms of digital distribution. The only way people bought in was that Half Life 2 was really good and required it. It started as a DRM layer but I think they took a look at how consoles were developing and took a lot of queues from Microsoft and XBL and incorporated them in such a way that it made Steam seem less like a DRM tool and more of a thing you wanted to run. Then they started the steep discounting and people bought a ton of games they were never going to play but happily paid for and devs liked this. And now we're where we are now.
 
T

thoseAREmySHOES

Member
Gorillaz said:
to keep it short and simple

Half life 2 was the trojan horse and through competitive pricing such as steam sales they built up loyalty

It took AWHILE tho for that too happen. I think alot of people forgot how much shit they got during the early days.
Click to expand...

I think it's kind of funny... it seems like people typically like to remember all the negative stuff about video games and the industry, but with Steam you rarely even see it brought up.
 
R

Rocket_Chips

Neo Member
Half-Life 2 got a lot of people in the Steam ecosystem even though Steam sucked then. Then the Orange Box got even more people, and on and on. Then Steam didn't suck and everyone put their games on it.
 
C

cacildo

Member
One day i saw Just Cause 2 for less than $4 in my country.

Now i dont have a pc that can run this game. But i can see its an amazing game for an incredible price. How can somebody not like this?

And they have old games too! This blocks the "i like this ONE modern game and aside from this i hate everything" situation
 
LiquidMetal14

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
Kade said:
Sales and support.
Click to expand...

It certainly wasn't due to their customer support. It's ok but still takes more time and to not have a live chat or call in option is something I wish they would remedy. I'd take at least a chat. Origin has them beat in this regard by a long shot even though their text chat support is admittedly not as good as the phone support.

Steam is big due to the convenience it creates. Automatic patching, ease of data recovery in case files go missing, cloud saves, great community support with workshop, and lots of things that others simply aren't even attempting to do. Every Steam sale there seems to be some kind of neat gimmick instead of just a regular good sale. Then they add cards and other features. They are constantly improving the client and service.

Of course it wasn't always like that but if there wasn't a Steam around I fear that PC gaming wouldn't be where it is today. Can't really say I would rather have it any other way.

If you want competition or something different then that's definitely there and that's ok. It's what makes PC gaming so good.
 
H

hodgy100

Member
Ngx8j.jpg
Click to expand...

thats why
 
R

Ricerocket

Member
Steam was terrible when it launched. Very buggy. It took a lot of time but eventually they slowly got it working better and in combination the hype that was Half Life 2 helped it tremendously imo.
 
C

Crisium

Member
Back before and around when HL2 launched it was bad. We all called it a Steaming Pile of Shit. Obviously it got better.
 
Mohonky

Mohonky

Member
Steam was forced onto you with Half Life 2.

.....and it sucked. Big time. Especially if like me at the time, dial up was your only form of connection. It took days to be able to even play it.
 
D

Dibbz

Member
Half Life 2, Counter Strike plus unified friends list, server lists plus auto updating of games that were on steam. Then a massive boom with Portal and Left 4 Dead and TF2. Store sales helped but the ground work was put in earlier.
 
K

Kade

Member
I didn't mean their customer support. By support I mean the ongoing development of the Steam platform, including Steam Community, Workshop, Cloud, Market, SteamOS, etc.
 
P

poopninjamvc3mk

I sucked six dicks to get this tag.
They say Lord Gaben sold his soul to the devil for the success and was just able to buy it back by somehow ridding the world of GFWL that us mere humans cannot understand.
 
K

kaskade

Member
I think sales, and a lot of people were tired of waiting for the new generation to start and ended up building PC when the generation should have ended.
 
U

UnObtainium17

Member
Gabe told me to use steam.. so I did.

Jokes aside. I liked steam because it just works really well buy shit, dl it with really fast speeds compared to pan and launch your game. Sales was there to too expand my games library. And the steam community is fantastic.
 
Truespeed

Truespeed

Member
Valve can thank Microsoft for their inept and pathetic attempts to provide a suitable alternative. That, plus Microsoft's continued efforts to sabotage their own platform. You could not have done a worse job then Microsoft has.
 
G

Gorillaz

Member
Syril said:
To be fair Steam deserved all that shit in the early days.
Click to expand...

thoseAREmySHOES said:
I think it's kind of funny... it seems like people typically like to remember all the negative stuff about video games and the industry, but with Steam you rarely even see it brought up.
Click to expand...

it was always interesting how many people overlooking how it was hated due to it being tied to HL2 at launch and how barebones it was then. Rewriting history you can say
 
S

Sibylus

Banned
Microsoft left a vacuum to fill. Apparently building a new gaming platform and managing the old effectively is a hard thing to balance.
 
E

Eusis

Member
They did digital distribution right relative to other companies (look at Digital River for example, if that was the future of DD then it'd NEED to be stopped), they had great sales, they hit at a time when DRM was getting worse and worse and provided a surprisingly reasonable option (though some companies suck and stuck their terrible DRM on Steam releases anyway), and their own games were a great trojan horse. Doubly so with Half LIfe CD Key redemption, I found out about it when my CDs wouldn't install and looked online for a solution, and Steam just let me pop them in and download the games without issue! It was like magic!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Gabe Newell says 99% of the industry thought Steam won't work as a distribution platform at the start, because "people want physical copies"
2 3
105
6K
Donald mac Ronald replied
Former VP of Prime Gaming Tells Story of How "Goliath" Amazon Lost to Steam
38
2K
Grildon Tundy replied
[PC Gamer] The Steam Deck 2 doesn't need to happen because Valve will win either way (though I hope it does)
Opinion 2
68
4K
rodrigolfp replied
So how much did you spend in the last 12 months gaming-wise?
37
384
Punished Miku replied
Final Fantasy XVI Steam - Early Purchase Bonuses
14
1K
{insert code here} replied
Top Bottom