I remember Steam’s launch and understand completely.
I hated Steam for a long time because of Half-life 2.
I mean yeah.
I had to install some program and connect online to PLAY A SINGLE PLAYER GAME? I have the CD already and entered my CD key. Why does it need validation?
This is surely the death of PC gaming.
- me in 2005
Oh MAN. I forgot about those times, hand typing in a 36 character CD key that was spat out by a dot matrix printer with questionable typeset legibility…
That’s if Steam was even able to connect so you could enter the key.
This nightmare of the server being down on day 1 (and sometimes the whole week) is what trained me to never buy a game on release.
It still happens! To this day!
Same. I think Civ 5 was my gateway game.
TF2 here, when Microsoft laughed at the idea of continously updating one game instead of doing sequels or paid expansions, ya know because that used to be unusual, and shit-canned all updates for the Console verison I moved to PC… and… then switched back to playing the console version because my PC couldn’t play online games worth a damn back then.
Then I abandoned my Steam account to rot… until Portal 2 came out and paying full retail price for a Portal sequel felt silly, so I just got the Steam version since if I recall that was not only cheaper but came with a bunch of other games in this thing called a potato pack that also gave me Super Meat Boy.
Then I realized that playing on consoles, paying for Xbox Live, and risking my physical media getting lost or damaged… was kinda silly.
To be fair, 2005-2009 felt like a Death of PC Gaming since people stopped making PC Ports of games out of fears that that just invited piracy.
RIP games with no Steam release like Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard and Enchanted Arms
Hope ports happen some day.
It’s ironic cause that’s when I ascended.
Seeing the ps3 as a quasi computer made me see the writing on the wall.
I hated it in the early days because I wanted to own physical media for my games, etc., and I just didn’t trust an online games library that could vanish in a business deal or bankruptcy. Little did I know that CDs and DVDs have a shelf life. I learned to love Steam over the years.
Now I hate subscriptions-for-everything and love Steam even more for only charging me once to buy a game.
My colleague (late 40s) is still like that. Buys only GoG or I guess physical, although it’s mostly codes nowadays anyway? I mean good for him but he misses out on like 80% of games.
I don’t think Steam will ever die but I hope it won’t fall into enshittification at some point.
As a patient gamer, I only buy older games on sale under ten bucks. I don’t replay games too often, so if I lose access it’s a big whatever.
To be fair when Steam first dropped, the idea of digital distribution was hopelessly naive and everything similar to it (like GameTap) was shut down pretty quickly.
Everything that tries to be “like Steam” also fails hard.
So there was a time when I was laughing at Steam with the rest of them.
You forced it on people by demanding it for a must-have game… which came on discs. To some extent, even now, fuck you.
Other comments talk about great sale prices, which is often an anticompetitive practice called “dumping.”
I’d be less blunt if people could admit it’s a monopoly. ‘Oh I never even consider other stores.’ Uh-huh. ‘I mean there’s competitors, but they hardly matter. Even billion-dollar companies can’t make theirs relevant.’ You don’t say. ‘Valve can even afford to let devs sell keys wherever, and the customers still get their ecosystem!’ Yeah, wow. We have a word for that. ‘How dare you.’
The problem is everyone who tries to do what Steam does does it incompetently so it’s not viable.
GOG Galaxy is the closest I’ve seen to a viable competitor though and I respect the work they put into making older games run on newer hardware.
Steam is a monopoly, it’s just not cartoonishly evil and the bar for a good company is super low these days.
The big thing with steam is that it had, what was, at the time, a leading developer, valve, behind it. So it was a no brainer to manage your valve games.
As other games were added to the service it just became convenient to pick them up on steam.
Now, I consider a game “not released on PC” unless it’s on steam.
Ok so all of a sudden Gabe is everywhere giving quotable quotes. Is this damage control after the bazillion dollar fleet of yachts news, is he about to retire, is it just because of the HL2 anniversary, or…?
