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Man, steams user base has more than tripled since I started using it... and I thought I came in a bit late.
Using it in 2004 was like a dream. It was already incredible to have all my valve games in one place that I can redownload whenever (overnight slowly on DSL) without having any discs and it just worked. Didn’t have to insert a disc just to play the installed game via activation, didn’t have to clone the disc and mount the iso to pretend the same. It just worked and has just worked ever since.
I was also using it then and most people hated it at the time. People generally saw it as useless DRM they had to install to play the games they had already paid for. The biggest complaint was needing to install it and register Counter-Strike to get the 1.6 update.
This gif comes to mind:
many youngns here are missing this bit of context.
it was also very prone to endless issues at the time.
Absolutely it was. It’s definitely had its growing pains, but I was in a generally advantageous place where most of the issues hadn’t caused problems for me. In this case, I was sorta golden path user.
I joined Steam when I bought Portal on disk from a store and couldn't play it without signing up for Steam and installing Steam just to play my game.
And looking for some good low latency servers to play (CS at the time for me) before even opening the game....only to have to choose 150-200 ping ones with the fun mods I wanted to play and be booted from them from for having high ping 🤣
Shit Steam has gone up almost 30x since I started using it and even I feel like I was late to the party.