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Steam's Release
Steam is created to keep track of and update Valve's games. Notably there is no storefront, the application is purely an addition for games you already own. -
Half Life 2
Half life two releases, and to purchase it you have to have steam. The success of Half Life two guaranteed that a huge portion of the community had steam installed and some experience using it. -
Digital Sales
Digital sales becomes an industry wide phenomena. With popularity growing and internet speeds rising it becomes possible to buy games online, and Steam is at the forefront. Steam the virtual marketplace is born. -
Steam Community
Steam released many features in 2007 but possibly the most important was the steam community features. This encouraged people to build community on the app. Building friend lists, forums, stat tracking, etc, expanding how their user base interacted with their program. -
Continued sucess
2008 was a great year for Steam. Notably they released Steam Cloud. Allowing safe files and settings to be transferred between computers! -
Steam Workshop
The addition of steam workshop allowed community made content to be added directly to their app. This allowed both creators and consumers to interact even more through Steam. -
Family Sharing
Steam adds family sharing allowing accounts to share steam games as long as the person using the library isn't currently using them. This allows community members to pass around games similar to physical copies, increasing awareness and ultimately the number of sales! -
VR
As Virtual reality becomes more popular steam adds a dedicated virtual reality category, highlighting the growing medium. Steam continues to make an effort to stay on top of the industry. -
New competition
The Epic Game Store launches as a full marketplace after Fortnite makes huge amounts of money. To combat Steam they give creators better cuts of the profits for their games, and therefore many companies switch marketplaces. Steam is forced to reconsider their place in the market, no longer the only large digital retailer. -
Steam Looking Forward
While Steam isn't the only digital market place, it still has some excellent features working for it. The Community Market and Workshop, VR support, and dedicated hardware are all ways Steam sets itself apart. Looking forward steam is investing in streaming, personalized recommendations, and a handheld console. While no one can say what the future holds, Steam has changed the course of Computer gaming forever and will very probably continue to do so!