Today, Steam is such a popular PC gaming platform that it has repeatedly faced lawsuits over allegations of monopoly. But for 20 years, almost no one believed anyone would even need the service.
In a recent twentieth anniversary documentary Half-Life 2, the head of the company Gabe Newell, talked a little about the first steps in the formation of the service. Valve originally planned to simply use it to send game updates, rather than distribute them. However, at some point the developers decided that they could download entire games this way.
The first “swallow” was Half-Life 2, which required a Steam client to install. The decision was controversial – many players were not happy with this condition, as it was a single-player project. But in the end, Gabe Newell defended him against the rest of the team. However, many companies did not believe in the future of Steam and refused to provide copies of games:
It was a very strange time. I don’t think people realize how many times we approached studios and offered to distribute software over the Internet, and they said, “No, that will never happen.” I’m not talking about one or two people. I mean, 99% of the companies we talked to said this would never happen. “Users don’t need it… people want physical copies,” they argued. There were so many strange arguments. Retail sales aren’t the goal, right? It’s about who stands between you and the consumer.
Ultimately, Valve’s strategy worked and over time Steam evolved into the best PC gaming platform we know today.
Recently, Valve lost one of the studio’s veterans: designer Greg Coomer, whose appearance was used for the Gordon Freeman model, left the company and, according to rumors, moved to Microsoft. Meanwhile, US social activists accused Steam of spreading “extremist content.”
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Source: VG Times