steam software this article is about the digital distribution platform for video games for the video game console see steam machine hardware platform steamworks redirects here for the brewery see steamworks brewing company for the robotics competition see first steamworks steam is a digital distribution platform developed by valve corporation for purchasing and playing video games steam offers digital rights management drm matchmaking servers video streaming and social networking services steam provides the user with installation and automatic updating of games and community features such as friends lists and groups cloud saving and ingame voice and chat functionality the software provides a freely available application programming interface api called steamworks which developers can use to integrate many of steams functions into their products including networking matchmaking ingame achievements microtransactions and support for usercreated content through steam workshop though initially developed for use on microsoft windows operating systems versions for macos and linux were later released mobile apps with connected functionality with the main software were later released for ios android and windows phone in the 2010s the platform also offers a small selection of nonvideo game content such as design software anime and films the steam platform is the largest digital distribution platform for pc gaming estimated in 2013 to have 75 of the market space by early 2018 the service had over 150 million registered accounts with a peak of 185 million concurrent users online the success of the steam platform has led to the development of a line of steam machine microconsoles which include the steamos operating system and steam controllers and various virtual reality devices using steamvr such as the htc vive history timeline of events 2002 announcement and beta release 2003 official release 2004 2005 first publisher partnership 2006 2007 steam community launched 2008 steamworks released matchmaking released 2009 steam cloud 2010 mac os x client releasedtranslation server opened2011steam workshop launched2012steam mobile apps releasedsteam for schools launchedsteam greenlight launchedbig picture mode launchedproductivity software added to catalog 2013 linux client released family sharing launched 2014 inhome streaming launchedsteam music launched discovery 10 update 2015 broadcast streaming launchedsteam hardware steamos steam machines released moviest v purchasesrenting added to library2016steamvr launcheddiscovery 20 update launched2017steam direct launched2018steamtv launched before implementing steam valve corporation had problems updating its online games such as counterstrike providing patches would result in most of the online user base disconnecting for several days valve decided to create a platform that would update games automatically and implement stronger antipiracy and anticheat measures through user polls at the time of its announcement in 2002 valve also recognized that at least 75 of their users had access to highspeed internet connections which would only grow with planned internet expansion in the following years and recognized that they could deliver game content faster to players than through retail channels steams development began in 2002 with working titles for the platform being grid and gazelle between 80000300000 players participated in the beta client before its official release on september 11 2003 for which it was mandatory to use with counterstrike version 16 around that time valve began negotiating contracts with several publishers and independent developers to release their products including rag doll kung fu and darwinia on steam canadian publisher strategy first announced in december 2005 that it would partner with valve for digital distribution of current and future titles beginning with rag doll kung fu in october 2005 thirdparty games became available for purchase and download on steam since 2007 valve has continued to expand steams functionality and services for consumers and developers client functionality software delivery and maintenance steams primary service is to allow its users to download games and other software that they have in their virtual software libraries to their local computers as game cache files gcfs prior to 2009 most games released on steam had traditional antipiracy measures including the assignment and distribution of product keys and support for digital rights management software tools such as securom or nonmalicious rootkits with an update to the steamworks sdk in march 2009 valve added its custom executable generation ceg approach into the steamworks sdk that removed the need for these other measures the ceg technology creates a unique encrypted copy of the games 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 in september 2008 valve added support for steam cloud a service that can automatically store saved game and related custom files on valves servers users can access this data from any machine running the steam client in september 2013 steam introduced the ability to share most games with family members and close friends by authorizing machines to access ones library authorized players can install the game locally and play it separately from the owning account users can access their saved games and achievements providing 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 his or her own account in accordance with its acceptable use policy valve retains the right to block and unblock customers access to their games and steam services when valves anticheat vac software determines that the user is cheating in multiplayer games selling accounts to others or trading games to exploit regional price differences storefront features the steam client includes a digital storefront called the steam store through which users can purchase computer games once the game is bought a software license is permanently attached to the users steam account allowing him or her 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 users of steams storefront can also purchase games and other software as gifts to be given to another steam user prior to may 2017 users could purchase these gifts to be held in their profiles inventory until they opted to gift them however this feature enabled a gray market around some games where a user in a country where the price of a game was substantially lower than elsewhere could stockpile giftable copies of games to sell to others particularly in regions with much higher prices the steam store also enables users to redeem store product keys to add software from their library the keys are sold by thirdparty providers such as humble bundle in which a portion of the sale is given back to the publisher or distributor distributed as part of a physical release to redeem the game or given to a user as part of promotions often used to deliver kickstarter and other crowd funding rewards a grey market exists around steam keys where less reputable buyers purchase a large number of steam keys for a game when it is offered for a low cost and then resell these keys to users or other thirdparty sites at a higher price generating profit for themselves in 2013 steam began to accept player reviews of games other users can subsequently rate these reviews as helpful humorous or otherwise unhelpful which are then used to highlight the most useful reviews on the games steam store page steam also aggregates these reviews and enables users to sort products based on this feedback while browsing the store during mid2011 valve began to offer freetoplay games such as global agenda spiral knights and champions online this offer was linked to the companys move to make team fortress 2 a freetoplay title in october 2012 steam introduced nongaming applications which are sold through the service in the same manner as games in conjunction with developers and publishers valve frequently provides discounted sales on games on a daily and weekly basis sometimes oriented around a publisher genre or holiday theme and sometimes allow games to be tried for free during the days of these sales the site normally offers a large selection of games at discount during its annual summer and holiday sales including gamification of these sales to incentive users to purchase more games privacy and security the popularity of steam has led to the services being attacked by hackers in the past an attempt occurred in november 2011 when valve temporarily closed the community forums citing potential hacking threats to the service days later valve reported that the hack had compromised one of its customer databases potentially allowing the perpetrators to access customer informationincluding encrypted password and credit card details at that time valve was not aware whether the intruders actually accessed this information or discovered the encryption method but nevertheless warned users to be alert for fraudulent activity valve added steam guard functionality to the steam client in march 2011 to protect against the hijacking of accounts via phishing schemes one of the largest support issues valve had at the time in 2015 between steambased game inventories trading cards and other virtual goods attached to a users account valve stated that the potential monetary value had drawn hackers to try to access user accounts for financial benefit and continue to encourage users to secure accounts with steam guard when trading was introduced in 2011 revuln a commercial vulnerability research firm published a paper in october 2012 that said the steam browser protocol was posing a security risk by enabling malicious exploits through a simple user click on a maliciously crafted steam url in a browser in july 2015 a bug in the software allowed anyone to reset the password to any account by using the forgot password function of the client highprofile professional gamers and streamers lost access to their accounts in april 2018 valve added new privacy settings for steam users who are able to set if their current activity status is private visible to friends only or public in addition to being able to hide their game lists inventory and other profile elements in a similar manner while these changes brought steams privacy settings inline with approaches used by game console services it also impacted thirdparty services such as steam spy which relied on the public data to estimate steam sales count valve established a hackerone bug bounty program in may 2018 a crowdsourced method to test and improve security features of the steam client user interface since november 2013 steam allows for users to review their purchased titles and organize them into categories set by the user and add to favorite lists for quick access players can add nonsteam games to their libraries allowing the game to be easily accessed from the steam client and providing support where possible for steam overlay features the steam interface allows for userdefined shortcuts to be added in this way thirdparty modifications and games not purchased through the steam store can use steam features valve sponsors and distributes some modifications freeofcharge when connecting ones computer to a television steams big picture mode turns the computer into a console navigable with both a controller and mouse steams big picture mode was announced in 2011 the steam client as part of a social network service allows users to identify friends and join groups using the steam community feature through steamworks steam provides a means of server browsing for multiplayer games that use the steam community features allowing users to create lobbies with friends or members of common groups steamworks also provides valve anticheat vac valves proprietary anticheat system game servers automatically detect and report users who are using cheats in online multiplayer games in september 2014 steam music was added to the steam client allowing users to play through music stored on their computer or to stream from a locally networked computer directly in steam developer features valve offers steamworks an application programming interface api that provides development and publishing tools to take advantage of steam clients features freeofcharge to game and software developers valve added the ability for developers to sell games under an early access model with a special early access section of the steam store starting in march 2013 this program allows developers to release functional but yetincomplete products such as beta versions to the service to allow users to buy the titles and help provide testing and feedback towards the final production early access also helps to provide funding to the developers to help complete their titles developers are able to request steam keys of their products to use as they see fit such as to give away in promotions to provide to selected users for review or to give to key resellers for different profitization valve generally honors all such requests but clarified that they would evaluate some requests to avoid giving keys to games or other offerings that are designed to manipulate the steam storefront and other features for example valve said that a request for 500000 keys for a game that has significantly negative reviews and 1000 sales on steam is unlikely to be granted steam workshop the steam workshop is a steam accountbased hosting service for videogame usercreated content depending on the title new levels art assets gameplay modifications or other content may be published to or installed from the steam workshop through an automated online accountbased process the workshop was originally used for distribution of new items for team fortress 2 as of january 2015 valve themselves had provided some userdeveloped workshop content as paidfor features in valvedeveloped games including team fortress 2 and dota 2 with over 57 million being paid to content creators using the workshop steam for schools steam for schools is a functionlimited version of the steam client that is available freeofcharge for use in schools it is part of valves initiative to support gamification of learning for classroom instruction it was released alongside free versions of portal 2 and a standalone program called puzzle maker that allows teachers and students to create and manipulate levels it features additional authentication security that allows teachers to share and distribute content via a steam workshoptype interface but blocks access from students storefront curation in general up through 2012 valve would manually select games to be included on the steam service limiting these to games that either had a major developer supporting them or smaller studios with proven track records for valves purposes valve have sought ways to enable more games to be offered through steam while pulling away from manually approving games for the service short of validating that a game runs on the platforms the publisher had indicated steam greenlight valves first attempt to streamline game addition to the service was with steam greenlight announced in july 2012 and released the following month the initial process offered by steam greenlight was panned because while developers favored the concept the rate of games that are eventually approved by valve is very small steam direct steam greenlight was phased out and replaced with steam direct in june 2017 on announcing its plans for steam direct valve suggested the fee would be in the range of 1005000 meant to encourage earnest software submissions to the service and weed out poor quality titles that are treated as shovelware improving the discovery pipeline to steams customers discovery updates without more direct interaction on the curation process allowing hundreds more games on the service valve had looked to find methods to allow players to find games they would be more likely to buy based on previous purchase patterns valve has attempted to deal with fake games those that are built around reused assets and little other innovation designed to misuse steams features for the benefit only to the developer or select few users to help assist finding and removing these games from the service the company added steam explorers atop its existing steam curator program according to various youtube personalities that have spoken out about such games in the past and with valve directly including jim sterling and totalbiscuit any steam user is able to sign up to be an explorer and are asked to look at underperforming games on the service as to either vouch that the game is truly original and simply lost among other releases or if it is an example of a fake game at which point valve can take action to remove the game policies in june 2015 valve created a formal process to allow purchasers to request full refunds on games they had purchased on steam for any reason with refunds guaranteed within the first two weeks as long as the player had not spent more than two hours in the game valve has full authority to remove games from the service for various reasons however games that are removed can still be downloaded and played by those that have already purchased these titles trolling and other violations with the launch of steam direct effectively removing any curation of games by valve prior to being published on steam there have been several incidents of published games that have attempt to mislead steam users starting in june 2018 valve has taken actions against games and developers that are trolling the system in september 2018 valve explicitly defined that trollers on steam arent actually interested in good faith efforts to make and sell games to you or anyone and instead use game shaped object that could be considered a video game but would not be considered a good video game by a nearunanimity of users in addition to removing bad actors from the service valve has also taken steps to reduce the impact of fake games and their misuse on the service in may 2017 valve identified that there were several games on the service with trading card support where the developer distributed game codes to thousands of botoperated accounts that would run the game to earn trading cards that they could then sell for profit these games would also create false positives that make these titles appear more popular than they really were and would impact games suggested to legitimate players through their store algorithms affecting steams discovery algorithms subsequent to this patch games must reach some type of confidence factor based on actual playtime before they can generate trading cards with players credited for their time played towards receiving trading cards before this metric is met other actions taken by developers against the terms of service or other policies will prompt valve to remove games some noted examples include following a lawsuit that the developer digital homicide studios had issued against 100 unnamed steam users for leaving poor reviews of its games around september 2016 valve subsequently removed their games from the storefront for being hostile to steam customers according to a response written by valves doug lombardi in september 2017 valve removed 170 games developed by silicon echo operating under several different names that they had released over a period of a few months in 2017 after the implementation of steam direct valve cited that these were cheap fake games that relied on asset flipping with preexisting unity assets so that they could be published quickly and were designed to take advantage of the trading card market to allow players and the developers to profit from the trading card sales in february 2018 after discovering that the ceo of insel games had requested the companys employees to write positive steam reviews for its games as to manipulate the review scores valve removed all of insels titles from the service and banned the company from it in july 2018 updates to the game abstractism added executables that were found to be cryptocurrency dataminers as well as offering steam inventory items that used assets from other valve games which mislead users looking for these for trading valve removed the game from steam when these changes were reported by players shortly after mature content valve has also removed or threatened to remove games due to inappropriate or mature content though there was often confusion as to what material qualified for this such as a number of mature but nonpornographic visual novels being threatened for example eek games house party included scenes of nudity and sexual encounters in its original release which drew criticism from the national center on sexual exploitation leading valve to remove the title from the service eek games were later able to satisfy valves standards by including censor bars within the game and allowing the game to be readded to steam though offered a patch on their website to remove the bars in june 2018 valve clarified its policy on content taking a more handsoff approach rather than deem what content is inappropriate outside of illegal material rather than trying to make decisions themselves on what content is appropriate valve stated they were improving discovery tools so that users have better ability to block games that they do not want to see as well as develop antiharassment tools to support developers who may find their game amid controversy platforms microsoft windows steam originally released exclusively for microsoft windows in 2003 but has since been ported to other platforms newer steam client versions use features provided by a google chrome engine to take advantage of some of chromes features for newer interface elements steam needs to use 64bit versions of chrome which since around 2016 are unsupported on windows xp and windows vista steam on windows also relies on some security features built into later versions of windows valve announced that it will be dropping steam support for xp and vista at the start of 2019 and while they will still be able to use the steam client may not have access to new features to be added at the time of this announcement in june 2018 only about 022 of the steam users would be affected by this macos on march 8 2010 valve announced a client for mac os x steam for mac os x was originally planned for release in april 2010 but was pushed back to may 12 2010 following a beta period in addition to the steam client several features were made available to developers allowing them to take advantage of the crossplatform source engine and platform and network capabilities using steamworks linux valve announced in july 2012 that it was developing a steam client for linux and modifying the source engine to work natively on linux based on the ubuntu distribution the team developing the linux client had been working for a year before the announcement to validate that such a port would be possible in august 2018 valve released a beta version of proton an opensource windows compatibility layer for linux so that linux users could run windows games directly through steam for linux removing the need to install the windows version of steam in wine proton is composed of a set of opensource tools including wine and dxvk among others the software allows the use of steam supported controllers even those not compatible with windows consoles at e3 2010 newell announced that steamworks would arrive on the playstation 3 with portal 2 it would provide automatic updates community support downloadable content and other unannounced features the xbox 360 does not have support for steamworks newell said that they would have liked to bring the service to the console through the game counterstrike global offensive which would have allowed valve to provide the same feature set that it did for the playstation 3 mobile platforms valve released an official steam client for ios and android devices in late january 2012 following a short beta period on may 14 2018 a softwareonly version of the steam link technology was released in beta to allow users to stream games to android phones valve also plans to release a steam video app for mobile platforms later that year to allow users to stream any media they own through steam steam machine steam machine hardware platform prior to 2013 industry analysts believed that valve was developing hardware and tuning features of steam with apparent use on its own hardware these computers were preemptively dubbed as steam boxes by the gaming community and expected to be a dedicated machine focused upon steam functionality and maintaining the core functionality of a traditional video game console market share and impact users valve reported that there were 125 million active accounts on steam by the end of 2015 valve also considers the concurrent user count a key indicator of the success of the platform reflecting how many accounts were logged into steam at the same time by august 2017 valve reported that they saw an peak of 14 million concurrent players up from 84 million in 2015 with 33 million concurrent players each day and 67 million each month sales and distribution graph showing the sales of garrys mod the largest spikes are caused by steam sales and promotions steam has grown significantly since its launch in 2003 whereas the service started with seven games in 2004 it was selling over 18000 games by the end of 2017 with over 7600 added to the service in that year alone though steam provides direct sales data to a games developer and publisher it does not provide any public sales data or provide such data to thirdparty sales groups like npd group in 2011 valves jason holtman stated that the company felt that such sales data was outdated for a digital market since such data used in aggregate from other sources could lead to inaccurate conclusions developers and publishers have expressed the need to have some metrics of sales for games on steam as this allows them to judge the potential success of a title by reviewing how similar games had performed this led to the creation of algorithms that worked on publiclyavailable data through user profiles to estimate sales data with some accuracy which led to the creation of the website steam spy in 2015 because of valves oversight of sales data estimates of how much of a market share steam has in the video game market is difficult to compile however stardock the previous owner of competing platform impulse estimated that as of 2009 steam had a 70 share of the digital distribution market for video games in november 2011 cd projekt the developer of the witcher 2 assassins of kings revealed that steam was responsible for 200000 80 of the 250000 online sales of the game steams customer service has been highly criticized with users citing poor response times or lack of response in regards to issues such as being locked out of ones library or having a nonworking game redemption key in march 2015 valve had been given a failing f grade from the better business bureau due to a large number of complaints in valves handling of steam leading valves erik johnson to state that we dont feel like our customer service support is where it needs to be right now curation the number of games by year published on steam estimated by steam spy in january 2018 years 2004 and 2005 are not visible on this chart the addition of greenlight and direct have accelerated the number of titles present on the service with almost 40 of the 19000 games on steam by the end of 2017 having been released in 2017 following the launch of steam direct allowing games to be published without valves curation members of the video game industry were split on valves handsoff approach some praised valve in favoring to avoid trying to be a moral adjudicator of content and letting consumers decide what content they want to see while others felt that this would encourage some developers to publish games on steam that are purposely hateful or degenerate of some social classes like lgbtq and that valves reliance on user filters and algorithms may not succeed in blocking undesirable content from certain users some further criticized the decision based on the financial gain as valve collects 30 of all sales through steam giving the company reason to avoid blocking any game content and further compounds the existing curation problems the service has sector competition from its release in 2003 through to nearly 2009 steam had a mostly uncontested hold over the pc digital distribution market before major competitors emerged with the largest competitors in the past being services like games for windows live and impulse both of which were shut down in 2013 and 2014 respectively as steam has grown in popularity many other competing services have been surfacing trying to emulate their success the most notable major competitors are electronic arts ea origin service ubisofts uplay blizzard entertainments battlenet and cd projekts gogcom battlenet competes as a publisher exclusive platform while gogcoms catalog includes many of the same titles as steam but offers them in a drmfree platform upon launch of eas origin in 2011 several eapublished titles were no longer available for sale and users feared that future ea titles would be limited to origins service newell expressed an interest in ea games returning to the steam catalog though noted the situation was complicated newell stated we have to show ea its a smart decision to have ea games on steam and were going to try to show them that legal issues steams predominance in the gaming market has led to valve becoming involved in various legal cases involving it the lack of a formal refund policy led the australian competition and consumer commission accc to sue valve in september 2014 for violating australian consumer laws that required stores to offer refunds for faulty or broken products in december 2015 the french consumer group ufc que choisir initiated a lawsuit against valve for several of their steam policies that conflict or run afoul of french law including the restriction against reselling of purchased games which is legal in the european union in 2017 the european commission began investigating valve and five other publishersbandai namco entertainment capcom focus home interactive koch media and zenimax mediafor anticompetitive practices specifically the use of geoblocking through the steam storefront and steam product keys to prevent access to software to citizens of certain countries such practices would be against the digital single market initiative set by the european union notes wikimedia commons has media related to steam official website vtevalve corporationvideo gameshalflife halflife opposing force blue shift decay halflife 2 episode one episode two deathmatch lost coast portal portal portal 2 the lab counterstrike counterstrike condition zero source global offensive day of defeat day of defeat source team fortress team fortress classic team fortress 2 left 4 dead left 4 dead left 4 dead 2 dota dota 2 artifact other the orange box alien swarm bridge constructor portal technologyhardware steam controller steam machine steam link htc vive software goldsrc mods source filmmaker mods steam steamos valve anticheat peoplecurrent mike ambinder icefrog sam lantinga mike morasky brad muir gabe newell jay pinkerton robin walker campo santo jane ng chris remo jake rodkin sean vanaman former michael 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