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Steam is a video game digital distribution service and storefront managed by Valve. It was launched as a software client in September 12, 2003 to provide game updates automatically for Valve's games and expanded to distributing third-party titles on the 3rd of December 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, an 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 products on Steam that year. Initially developed for Windows, Steam was ported to macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS in the early 2010s. The storefront also offers productivity software, game soundtracks, videos, and Valve hardware such as the Index and Steam Deck.
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.[2] 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.[3] By 2021, the service had over 34,000 games with over 132 million monthly active users.[4] Steam's success has led to the development of the Steam Machine gaming PCs in 2015, including the SteamOS Linux distribution and Steam Controller; Steam Link devices for local game streaming; and in 2022, the handheld Steam Deck tailored for running Steam games.
In the early 2000s, Valve was looking for a better way to update its published games,[5] 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. They approached several companies, including Microsoft, Yahoo!, and RealNetworks, to build a client with these features, but were declined.[6]
Valve began its own platform development in 2002, using the working names "Grid" and "Gazelle".[7][8] The Steam platform was publicly announced at the Game Developers Conference event on March 22, 2002, and released for beta testing that day.[9][10] Prior to the implementation of Steam, Valve had a publishing contract with Sierra Studios; the 2001 version of the contract gave Valve rights to digital distribution of its games.[11] 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.[11]
In November 2004, Half-Life 2 was the first game to be offered digitally on Steam, requiring installation of the Steam client for retail copies. During this time users faced problems attempting to play the game.[7][12][13] The Steam requirement was met with concerns about software ownership, software requirements, and problems with overloaded servers demonstrated previously by the Counter-Strike rollout.[14]
In 2005, third-party developers were contracted to release games on Steam, such as Rag Doll Kung Fu and Darwinia.[15][16] 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.[17] 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.[18]
In 2020, Electronic Arts started to publish select games on Steam and offered its rebranded subscription service EA Play on the platform.[24][25] In 2022, Ubisoft announced that they would return to selling its recent games on Steam, starting with Assassin's Creed Valhalla, stating that they were "constantly evaluating how to bring our games to different audiences wherever they are".[26]
By 2014, total annual game sales on Steam were estimated at $1.5 billion.[27] By 2018, the service had over 90 million monthly active users.[28] In 2018, its network delivered 15 billion gigabytes of data, compared to less than 4 billion in 2014.[29]
Steam's primary service is to allow its users to purchase games and other software, adding them to a virtual library from which they may be downloaded and installed an unlimited number of times. Initially, Valve was required to be the publisher for these games since they had sole access to Steam's database and engine, but with the introduction of the Steamworks software development kit (SDK) in May 2008, anyone could integrate Steam into their game without Valve's direct involvement.[30]
Valve intended to "make DRM obsolete" as games released on Steam had traditional anti-piracy measures, including the assignment and distribution of product keys and support for digital rights management software tools such as SecuROM or non-malicious rootkits. With an update to the Steamworks SDK in March 2009, Valve added "Custom Executable Generation" (CEG), which creates a unique, encrypted copy of the game's executable files for the given user, which allows them to install it multiple times and on multiple devices, and make backup copies of their software.[31] Once the software is downloaded and installed, the user must then authenticate through Steam to de-encrypt the executable files to play the game. Normally this is done while connected to the Internet following the user's credential validation, but once they have logged into Steam once, a user can instruct Steam to launch in a special offline mode to be able to play their games without a network connection.[32][33] Developers are not limited to Steam's CEG and may include other forms of DRM (or none at all) and other authentication services than Steam; for example, some games from publisher Ubisoft require the use of their Uplay gaming service.[34]
In November 2007, Steam achievements were added, similar to Xbox 360 Achievements.[35] In September 2008, Valve added support for Steam Cloud, a service that can automatically store saved game and related custom files on Valve's servers; users can access this data from any machine running the Steam client.[36] Users can disable this feature on a per-game and per-account basis.[37] Cloud saving was expanded in January 2022 for Dynamic Cloud Sync, allowing games developed with this feature to store saved states to Steam Cloud while a game is running rather than waiting until the user quit; this was added ahead of the portable Steam Deck unit so that users can save from the Deck and then put the unit into a suspended state.[38] In May 2012, the service added the ability for users to manage their game libraries from remote clients, including computers and mobile devices.[39] Product keys sold through third-party retailers can also be redeemed on Steam.[40] For games that incorporate Steamworks, users can buy redemption codes from other vendors and redeem these in the Steam client to add the title to their libraries. Steam also offers a framework for selling and distributing downloadable content (DLC) for games.[41][42]
In September 2013, Steam introduced the ability to share most games with family members and close friends by authorizing machines to access one's library. Authorized players can install the game locally and play it separately from the owning account. Users can access their saved games and achievements provided the main owner is not playing. When the main player initiates a game while a shared account is using it, the shared account user is allowed a few minutes to either save their progress and close the game or purchase the game for their own account.[43] Within Family View, introduced in January 2014, parents can adjust settings for their children's tied accounts, limiting the functionality and accessibility to the Steam client and purchased games.[44] A more robust implementation of Family Sharing, titled "Steam Families", was put into beta in 2024, allowing up to five members of a household to share games from a single account, including the ability to play different games on those accounts along with different game saves and profiles, and enhanced parential control tools for those accounts.[45]
By its acceptable use policy, Valve retains the right to block customers' access to their games and Steam services when Valve's Anti-Cheat (VAC) software determines that the user is cheating in multiplayer games, selling accounts to others, or trading games to exploit regional price differences.[46] Blocking such users initially removed access to their other games, leading to some users with high-value accounts losing access because of minor infractions.[47] Valve later changed its policy to be similar to that of Electronic Arts' Origin platform, in which blocked users can still access their games but are heavily restricted, limited to playing in offline mode and unable to participate in Steam Community features.[48] Customers also lose access to their games and Steam account if they refuse to accept changes to Steam's end user license agreements; this last occurred in August 2012.[49] In April 2015, Valve began allowing developers to set bans on players for their games, but enacted and enforced at the Steam level, which allowed them to police their own gaming communities in a customizable manner.[50]
The Steam client includes a digital storefront called the Steam Store through which users can purchase games. Once the game is bought, a software license is permanently attached to the user's Steam account, allowing them to download the software on any compatible device. Game licenses can be given to other accounts under certain conditions. Content is delivered from an international network of servers using a proprietary file transfer protocol.[51] As of 2015, Steam sells its products in US and Canadian dollars, euros, pounds sterling, Brazilian reais, Russian rubles, Indonesian rupiah and Indian rupees[52] depending on the user's location.[53] In December 2010, the client began supporting the WebMoney payment system.[54] From April 2016 until December 2017, Steam accepted payments in Bitcoin before dropping support for it due to high fluctuation in value and costly service fees.[55][56] The Steam storefront validates the user's region; the purchase of games may be restricted to specific regions because of release dates, game classification, or agreements with publishers. Since 2010, the Steam Translation Server project allows Steam users to assist with the translation of the Steam client, storefront, and a selected library of Steam games for twenty-eight languages.[57] In October 2018, official support for Vietnamese and Latin American Spanish was added, in addition to Steam's then 26 languages.[58] Steam also allows users to purchase downloadable content for games, and for some specific games such as Team Fortress 2, the ability to purchase in-game inventory items. In February 2015, Steam began to open similar options for in-game item purchases for third-party games.[59]