Some of Steam’s oldest user accounts are turning 20-years old this week, and Valve is celebrating the anniversary by handing out special digital badges featuring the original Steam colour scheme to the gaming veterans.
Steam first opened its figurative doors all the way back in September 2003, and has since grown into the largest digital PC gaming storefront in the world, which is actively used by tens of millions of players each day.
“In case anyone’s curious about the odd colours, that’s the colour scheme for the original Steam UI when it first launched,” commented Redditor Penndrachen, referring to the badge’s army green colour scheme, which prompted a mixed reaction from players who remembered the platform’s earliest days. “I joined in the first six months,” lamented Affectionate-Memory4. “I feel ancient rn.”
Sept 12th 2003 is the date of my account. Tomorrow it turns 20. Very nice.
Fellow sept 12th here! Never would have thought that the simple looking launcher would turnout to be one of biggest juggernaut of selling digitale games!
Had to make a account so I could keep on playing CS 1.6. good times.
“What’s your friend ID”
“123456”…
“Okay, what’s the rest of the numbers?”
“That’s it. Those ARE the numbers”
*pikachu face*
Mine doesn’t turn 20 until January. I decided to wait a bit to see if it would actually fail first.
I hated the idea of an installer to install programs that had their own installers. It seemed like a pointless extra program to me, so I resisted getting it until I wanted to play Counterstrike and Steam was the best, or maybe the only way to do that. So I broke down and opened a Steam account.
I was a daily CounterStrike 1.6 player back then. I didn’t have a choice. Literally couldn’t play unless I converted over to a Steam account.
I was playing CS as well back then. I don’t recall being forced to use steam
I remember thinking Steam would die in less than 6 months because nobody wanted dematerialised games…
Part of the problem was how poorly steam ran when it was first introduced
yeah at the time you were forced into it. the won servers were shut down and most peoples computers werent good enough to play CS and have this clunky software running in the background at the same time. it worked but alt-tabbing back then was a gong show and you definitely had the performance hit.
i played CS daily then so the first day was a shit show and I dont think I got much time in that day. mostly just trying to get connected…the servers were overloaded.
I remember getting Half Life 2 for free with my graphics card, then realizing that I needed to download a whole ass other program to redeem my code and download the game. I thought it was for sure a scam and some kind of virus they were trying to get me to install. There were lots of “free” things back then that required you to download a virus to redeem.
Eventually I learned it was legit and downloaded it and got my free copy of HL2, but I was not happy about it.
Now every time I download a game at 800Mbps, I’m like, “I LOVE STEAM”
Edit: I just checked when I created my account. 16 years, 10 months ago. I still have a bit to go before I hit that 20 year mark. Apparently I created my account on my mom’s birthday? I wonder why I did that instead of doing something with her?
I too got hl2 free my graphics card, it was some kind of special edition that had like better cooling or something. It came in a special case too.
Unfortunately there was something wrong with it, don’t remember what. But I went back to the store and they didn’t had a replacement for it.
But for 50 bucks extra I could get a other, better card. They paid 50 themselves as a customer service thing, very nice that was!
I ended up flashing the card to unlock it to a higher tier card, never had any problems with it. So it was a truly great experience for me when hl2 launched.
The good old days.
I didn’t want it, still don’t. I actively avoided any game that required it but seems I gave up on 23 July 2011
Ah man, mine is only 18 years old.
Did you make your account for Half-Life 2? My account is the same age, and that’s the game that introduced me to Steam.
I made an account in January 2005, probably for HL2.
I initially resisted making an account and I hated Steam back then.
They’ve since fixed a lot of things and I now have 250+ games on it.
I have to admit, Valve is one of the few big game companies that haven’t gone to absolute shit.
Though I dread the day GabeN steps down or sells out…
Another thing that I didn’t agree with back in the day was WoW, paying a subscription to play was a hard no. Still haven’t played it, which kinda sucks because I was a big fan of the old Warcraft games and of RPGs in general.
Voting with my wallet certainly didn’t change much for them, although it probably was better for me.
WoW is a bit nuts: you pay a subscription fee and buy expansions? What’s the damn fee for then?
That’s quite similar to me. I got HL2 Jan. 2005. I played Guild Wars instead of WoW because I didn’t want to pay for a sub.
I remember connecting with WON before steam, nostalgia CS days
