Max Steam Popular Books

Max Steam Biography & Facts

Steam is a video game digital distribution service and storefront developed by Valve Corporation. It was launched as a software client in September 2003 to provide game updates automatically for Valve's games, and expanded to distributing third-party titles in late 2005. Steam offers various features, like game server matchmaking with Valve Anti-Cheat measures, social networking, and game streaming services. Steam client's functions include game update automation, cloud storage for game progress, and community features such as direct messaging, in-game overlay functions and a virtual collectable marketplace. Steamworks, a freely available application programming interface (API) released in 2008, is used by developers to integrate Steam's functions, including digital rights management (DRM), into their game products. Many game publishers began distributing their titles on Steam that year. Initially developed for Microsoft Windows operating systems, Steam was released for macOS in 2010 and Linux in 2012. Mobile apps accessing online Steam features were first released for iOS and Android in 2012. The platform's storefront also offers other digital content and Valve gaming hardware, including productivity software, game soundtracks, videos and the virtual reality headset, Valve Index. The service is the largest digital distribution platform for PC games, with an estimated 75% of the market share in 2013 according to IHS Screen Digest. By 2017, game purchases through Steam totaled about US$4.3 billion, or at least 18% of global PC game sales according to Steam Spy. By 2021, the service had over 34,000 games with over 132 million monthly active users. Steam's success has led to the development of the Steam Machine gaming PCs in 2015, including the SteamOS operating system and Steam Controller; Steam Link devices for local game streaming; and in 2022, the handheld Steam Deck tailored for running Steam games. History Valve was looking for a better way to update its published games, as providing downloadable patches for multiplayer games resulted in most of the online user base disconnecting for several days until players had installed the patch. They decided to create a platform that would update games automatically and implement stronger anti-piracy and anti-cheat measures. Through user polls at the time of its announcement in 2002, Valve also recognized that at least 75% of their users had access to high-speed Internet connections and realized they could deliver game content faster directly to players than through retail channels. They approached several companies, including Microsoft, Yahoo!, and RealNetworks, to build a client with these features, but were declined. Valve began its own platform development in 2002, using the working names "Grid" and "Gazelle". The Steam platform was publicly announced at the Game Developers Conference event on March 22, 2002, and released for beta testing that day. To demonstrate the ease of integrating Steam with a game, Relic Entertainment created a special version of its game Impossible Creatures. Valve partnered with several companies, including AT&T, Acer, and GameSpy. The first mod released on the system was Day of Defeat. In 2002, Valve president Gabe Newell said he was offering mod teams a game engine license and distribution over Steam for US$995. Prior to the implementation of Steam, Valve had a publishing contract with Sierra Studios; the 2001 version gave Valve rights to digital distribution of its games. Valve took Sierra and their owners, Vivendi Games, to court in 2002 over a claimed breach of this contract. Sierra counter-sued, asserting that Valve had been working to undermine the contract by offering a digital storefront for their games, directly competing with Sierra. The case was initially ruled in Valve's favor, allowing them to leave the contract and to seek other publishing partners for retail copies of its games while continuing their work on Steam. One company Valve approached at this time was Microsoft, but Microsoft executive Ed Fries said that they turned down the offer because Valve intended to continue selling their games on Steam. Between 80,000 and 300,000 players participated in the Steam beta test before its official release on September 12, 2003. The client and website suffered outages and bugs at launch. A monthly subscription to Valve games on Steam was planned. At the time, Steam's primary function was streamlining the patch process common in online computer games, and was an optional component for all other games. In 2004, the World Opponent Network was shut down and replaced by Steam, and online game features ceased to work until players switched to their Steam counterparts. In November 2004, Half-Life 2 was the first game to be offered digitally on Steam, and to require installation of the Steam client for retail copies. During this time users faced problems attempting to play the game. The Steam requirement was met with concerns about software ownership, software requirements, and problems with overloaded servers demonstrated previously by the Counter-Strike rollout. In 2005, third-party developers were contracted to release games on Steam, such as Rag Doll Kung Fu and Darwinia. Valve announced that Steam had become profitable because of some highly successful Valve games. Although digital distribution could not yet match retail volume, profit margins for Valve and developers were far larger on Steam. Publishers, such as id Software, Eidos Interactive, and Capcom began distributing their games on Steam in 2007. By May of that year, 13 million accounts had been created and 150 games were for sale. In 2008, more publishers like Ubisoft, THQ, Sega, Take-Two Interactive, Activision, and Electronic Arts had partnered with the service, but some games were unavailable or overpriced for markets outside North America. In May 2007, ATI included Steam in the ATI Catalyst GPU driver as well as offering a free Steam copy of Half-Life 2: Lost Coast and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch to ATI Radeon owners. In January 2008, Nvidia promoted Steam in the GeForce GPU driver, as well as offering a free Steam copy of Portal: The First Slice to Nvidia hardware owners. Traditional retail versions of games required mandatory installation of Steam, including Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 from Activision in 2009, Fallout: New Vegas from Bethesda Softworks in 2010, and Dragon Age II from Electronic Arts in 2011. In 2011, Electronic Arts removed some of its games from Steam because of its restrictive terms of service, and launched its games—beginning with Mass Effect 3 in 2012—on its Origin service. Newell stated, "We have to show EA it's a smart decision to have EA games on Steam." Valve held conferences called Steam Dev Days from 2013 to 2014. In 2014, Ubisoft games started to require Uplay to run after launching the game from Steam. In 2019, Ubisoft announced that they would stop selling their future games on Steam .... Discover the Max Steam popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Max Steam books.