Happy 10th anniversary Steam

[Chiefcrowe]

a nice little jaunt down memory lane -

http://kotaku.com/steam-is-10-today-remember-when-it-sucked-1297594444

 

[Red Storm]

The only DRM to get a "Happy Birthday!" from people lol.

I still remember buying the Orange Box and loading up TF2 for the first time. Good times.

 

[crownjules]

I was a pretty early adopter of Steam since I was playing a lot of CS back then. My account creation was early Oct 2003, so about a month after it's public launch. I remember how terrible the HL2 launch was as well. It's come a long way in 10 years.

 

[dougp]

I was in the closed beta, but for some reason my profile only says I was a member since launch, Sept 13, 2003.

http://steamcommunity.com/id/iamdougp

 

[CPA]

Hey Steam, where the hell is your 10 year birthday sale!?!

 

[Maximilian]

Happy bday steam Heres to 10 more years!

 

[motsm]

Still just annoying DRM to me, but it could be worse.

 

[gothamhunter]

For those with those really early steam ID's, they sell for quite a bit to Steam ID collectors

 

[runzwithsizorz]

2003 I bought HL2, and really didn't understand what was going on; register a game on line before I could play it? Ridiculous! But I did and at the time had no idea what "Valve/Steam" was or what it would become. Just thought the whole thing was kinda intrusive.

The Wife

 

[ImpulsE69]

Yea..i remember too because a friend of mine pre-ordered HL2 got a physical copy then had to register on Steam, then had to download the game, then I can't remember why, but it didn't work (Steam) he was peaved.

Meanwhile, I had pirated it and was playing it with no issues

 

[Sheik Yerbouti]

I remember bitching about Steam when it first came out, and it really, really sucked. It's improved so damn much. Pretty seamless now.

 

[SPBHM]

I think my first contact with Steam was using it to play CS 1.6 test version back in 2003... I was used to installing my HL with the CD, downloading CS 1.5 as a .exe file and connecting to "WON" lol
can't say Steam really convinced me at first...

 

[smackababy]

Yea..i remember too because a friend of mine pre-ordered HL2 got a physical copy then had to register on Steam, then had to download the game, then I can't remember why, but it didn't work (Steam) he was peaved.

Meanwhile, I had pirated it and was playing it with no issues

I bought it, and when the servers didn't work, pirated it.


Glad Steam opened the doors for everyone else to have server issues in the future!

 

[rivethead]

I've only been a Steam user for 3 years. They gave away free copies of Portal and someone mentioned it on the Hot Deals forums here at AT. I was intrigued. I figured free, so why not?

I've never finished Portal. But I've since spent plenty building my catalog of "games I'll never play but have the satisfaction (?) of knowing I bought them dirt cheap".

So Steam is definitely doing something right.

I think I read something about drug dealers giving out free hits of crack to get people hooked....interesting business model to follow.......

 

[zinfamous]

I first installed steam when my free copy of HL2 became available with the GPU that I had purchased...I think it was released at least 6 months after that purchase? I recall HL2 being massively delayed. I think that was sometime in 2004?

I found steam to be very annoying and unnecessary. For the first 4 or 5 years, all that I had on Steam was HL2 and whatever games came attached with that--CS (never played), HL1, etc. I never logged back in because it was only there to play HL2, and I was done with that after a few weeks.

Then, suddenly, something happened...

 

[Barfo]

I still remember buying the Orange Box and loading up TF2 for the first time. Good times.

I still remember trying to play HL2 when it was launched. Bad times man.

 

[Anarchist420]

Congratulations to Gabe Newell!

 

[Regs]

HL3 just around the corner....

 

[Zenoth]

Happy birthday to Steam!

And, yeah it brings back memories...

It'll be 10 years in 4 days from now, and I wouldn't have remembered had I not checked just now. I can barely grasp how fast time flies, if I could I'd ask it to slow down a bit.

 

[NoSoup4You]

January 27th, 2005 for me, I had HL2 and that was pretty much it for many years. Now I have 200+ games, and I've played probably 30 of them.

 

[Demo24]

Geez, hard to believe its been that long. Pretty sure orange box is what brought me there, didn't mind steam then. Grew to rather like it, then I remember getting annoyed at it because it seemed to become less about valve games and more about others. Now of course I wouldn't dream of it being valve exclusive.

 

[DeadFred]

Thought it was crap when I installed the orange box.....and my feelings havent changed in the past ten years.

 

[RandomFool]

Crazy. I've been around since the beginning, the launch was awful but I did manage to register my HL key twice and get two accounts which was handy when I was in two CS clans at the same time.

 

[Vampirrella]

I still have my tshirt from the HL2 collectors edition i bought in 2004 (thats when i installed steam for the first time) but the white HL2 logo has washed off so now its just a faded black tshirt..