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Comment by zppln | Hacker News Reader

Meh, I don't know. The whole reason Steam even exist is because Valve decided to lock CS 1.6 and later HL2 behind it. It's a long time ago now, but the way I remember things people hated Steam for years before the general perception started to change 15 or so years ago.

Edit: I'm also pretty sure they patched in-game ads into CS 1.6 at some point, but can't remember for sure. Anyone else recall that?

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I remember that. While it might not have been clear at the time, Valve definitely made Steam a value add. Friends lists, cloud saves, etc.

I think we can get a clearer picture if we compare it to Epics launch: No cloud saves at all, shoddy service all around. The only thing they had going for them was buying up exclusives (many of which had already been promised as Steam releases). Steam/Valve is really a saint in comparison, even back then.

>Valve definitely made Steam a value add. Friends lists, cloud saves, etc.

I mean, at launch these features definitely did not exist (cloud saves) or were buggy (friends lists). Holding Half Life 2 hostage behind steam was definitely controversial at the time, and Steam was kind of... not great for quite a while. Valve were in it for the long haul though and it really is a great ecosystem now, there are still some gripes to be had but like you say, compared to every other store on PC there really is no competition.

A fun article from the time it was released: https://www.dslreports.com/shownews/32981

Ah yes I remember steam being called a "steaming pile of shit" and an animated gif of the steam logo using used to drive a piston into a man's rear end being passed around. I recall the friends service was constantly broken. I had a copy of CS 1.5 on USB for local LAN usage.

At release internet speeds were honestly too slow and the software was filled with bugs.

The reason people hated Steam at the time of CS 1.6 is because those people who owned CS on WON would need to repurchase CS on Steam. Since all new players were on Steam it meant that the existing playerbase were excluded (there was no WON/Steam cross-play).

Not really.

The reason Steam exists and is as strong as it is, is because every other game developer abandoned PC gaming and went to the consoles, for an entire decade.

Including Microsoft.

People not only hated Steam, they hated PC gaming.

No, the other poster is right.

You had to use Steam to get HL2. This got them on enough PCs that they could build the dominance they have today.

There are obviously other reasons for their success, but the other poster is spot on both about what they did, and how many people felt about it at the time.

> because every other game developer abandoned PC gaming and went to the consoles, for an entire decade [...] People not only hated Steam, they hated PC gaming

There couldn't be anything more false. Game developers flocked to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 because Microsoft and Sony entered a bidding war and flooded them with money upfront to build exclusives for their platforms, while in the PC gaming space there was no such "free" money to be had upfront, as game studios had to fund development themselves or raise money from publishers and hope the end product would be a success to get their money back and make a profit on top to stay afloat.

And people didn't hate PC gaming, they hated the poor quality XB360/PS3 ports that were being pushed on the PC platform.

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