The history of Steam theoretically goes back to the 1990s. But if you look for the first game on the platform, you will quickly come across a popular shooter from 2004. You can find out why this shooter can be considered the first game on Steam here on MeinMMO.
Steam and its beginnings: Before Steam became the platform you know today, Valve more or less used it for other purposes.
It begins in 1999, at a time when it wasn’t that easy to connect with people around the world via the Internet. The Internet was not yet as accessible to the general public or as easy to use. Unlike today, not the majority of people had internet access.
Nevertheless, the gaming industry in particular saw a great opportunity to compete or cooperate with other players worldwide. Compared to the LAN parties that were popular at the time, this was also intended to give players a much easier way to play with friends.
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At that time, Valve was of the opinion that there still needed to be a platform from which the games could be installed directly on the user’s PC and updated automatically. Since no one wanted to take on this project, they simply did it themselves.
This is how Valve developed Steam. After the beta version, which started in March 2022, Steam was officially released for everyone on September 12, 2003.
The first game on Steam: To find out which was the first game on Steam, you have to dig 20 years into the past. And even then it’s more or less a matter of interpretation.
Because in September 2003 Steam was released together with the latest version 1.4 of Counter-Strike. At that time, Steam primarily offered the opportunity to play on the same servers with WON users. Back then, Steam primarily offered the opportunity to play on the same servers with WON users. WON is a network that was required for the multiplayer mode of Sierra Entertainment’s games.
Back then, Steam was primarily used for Counter-Strike and its updates.
A shooter that is still popular today lays the foundation for Steam
Steam’s real career as a gaming platform began in March 2004. Half-Life 2 was the first game that required a Steam account to purchase and then be installed and played via the platform. For this reason, many consider it to be the first game on Steam.
For many at the time, the required Steam account was a major point of criticism, as not every player had internet access or was willing to create an account for a game. This concept, which is hardly questioned today, was met with a rather negative reaction by many.
The fact that Steam was able to get this far despite the criticism can probably be attributed to the success of Half-Life 2. And even today, over 20 years after its release, the first part of the shooter is one of the best games on the platform.
Between CS and Half-Life 2, players were actually able to get another game via Steam. Codename: Gordon was the first third-party game to be offered on Steam.
However, since the game was removed from the catalog at some point, it may no longer be considered one of the first games on Steam, but it is certainly an important part of the gaming platform’s history.
You can also play a lot of classics on Steam. One of them is now even in a revised version: Steam: After almost 30 years, you can play a Bethesda classic for free and completely revised