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Steam (content delivery)
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Steam is a digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer and communications platform developed by Valve Corporation. It is used to distribute a wide range of games and related media entirely over the internet, stretching from one-man independent efforts to some of the world's most popular games. Steam is set apart from its peers in terms of functionality primarily by its residency in the system tray, and the desktop tasks that the client software performs to make use of that position.
As of March 7, 2009, 593 games are available on Steam, and as of February 18, 2009, there are over 20 million user accounts.
m allows users to purchase computer games entirely digitally.
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Encyclopedia
Steam is a digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer and communications platform developed by Valve Corporation. It is used to distribute a wide range of games and related media entirely over the internet, stretching from one-man independent efforts to some of the world's most popular games. Steam is set apart from its peers in terms of functionality primarily by its residency in the system tray, and the desktop tasks that the client software performs to make use of that position.
As of March 7, 2009, 593 games are available on Steam, and as of February 18, 2009, there are over 20 million user accounts.
Client functionality
Steam allows users to purchase computer games entirely digitally. Instead of receiving a box, disc, or even CD key, purchased software is immediately attached on the Steam servers to the user's free Steam account, from which it can be downloaded and played on any computer connected to the internet that allows the Steam client to be installed.
The client works similarly to a feed reader: the user selects the game they want on their computer and Steam then automates the process of downloading the content and keeping it up to date. The latest version of the game is immediately downloaded, and if there are multiple versions (e.g. a 64-bit edition) the correct one will be chosen automatically based on the computer's hardware and/or software environment. This process happens every time Steam is started online or a game is launched, ensuring that as many users as possible will have the latest software.
Steam transfers content over its own protocol, as opposed to the more common web protocols HTTP and FTP. It downloads from a set of 174 dedicated 'content servers' spread out across the world, connecting to several at once to try to ensure a fast and stable connection. The servers are organized into geographic 'cells' to help clients choose intelligently which to connect to.
In addition:
- Steam can validate its downloaded content for errors, a process that gives many of the benefits of reinstalling in a fraction of the time.
- Valve Anti-Cheat, Valve's proprietary anti-cheat system, can ban those who modify their games to gain unfair advantage.
- Steam's server browser allows users to search, filter, bookmark and join internet and LAN servers for games that integrate with it. It can be accessed from the desktop and from an integrated game's menu system, and queries Friends to show a list of servers to which a user's contacts are connected.
- Steam has a Distributed File System that allows a game to launch before it has been completely downloaded. By creating lists of files and requesting them only when about to be needed, a linear game can be begun with only the executable code and a buffer of the first few areas downloaded. In the worst-case scenario, the game will stall while Steam downloads in the background. However, this feature is rarely put to use.
- Steam-integrated games download to non-compressed archive files with the extension
.gcf. This helps to make games more portable, to stop users from overwriting important files, and can be used to prevent files from being tampered with (for instance, the creation of "pure" servers that do not allow custom textures or player models that may give unfair advantage). - A 'No Cache File' system is provided for games that do not integrate. Here, a
.ncf index file points to a folder of loose files somewhere else on the system.
Localization
Steam is currently available in the following languages: Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (US), Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Spanish, Swedish, and Thai.
At release, Steam displayed prices exclusively in US Dollars, meaning that customers in other countries had prices converted to their local currency upon purchase. On December 17 2008, Steam began selling its products in Euro and Pound Sterling, to those in the Eurozone and United Kingdom, respectively.
Mods
Steam's interface treats mods in almost exactly the same way as it does purchased games, including, for some, . This is in contrast with most games that offer no built-in launch utility at all. Mods appear in a user's list of installed games with the icons, developer links and other such details that are used by full games. They can also use VAC, Friends, the server browser, and any other Steam feature supported by their parent game. Currently, mods for Valve's GoldSrc games, Valve's Source games and Red Orchestra can be integrated.
On October 3 2008 Steam began freely distributing mods selected by Valve in the same manner as its commercial games.
Multiplayer lobbies and matchmaking
Introduced in Left 4 Dead and made available through Steamworks. A lobby system allows for players to organize and agree on game settings before joining a server and a matchmaking system can automatically group players together based on a certain criteria.
Payment
In November 2008 Steam's payment system was switched from a wizard embedded within the client to a web-based basket/checkout process. The checkout system expanded on the wizard by allowing users to buy multiple games at the same time and by allowing the storage of billing address details between transactions.
Games can either be bought individually or as part of 'packages'; Steam accepts most popular credit and debit cards (including Visa Electron), PayPal and ClickAndBuy.
Pricing varies depending on the licensing situation of a game. Independent games tend to be sold for $20 or less, but games owned by large publishers tend to be priced at the same level as in stores, if not higher. Publisher games also tend to change price depending on the buyer's location.
Gamers will sometimes condemn Valve over these higher prices (since without the expense of physical manufacture and distribution one would expect lower prices), but industry insiders point out that the culprits are actually retailers, who threaten to take fewer boxed copies of games if they are undercut with digital distribution.
Steam Community
On September 12 2007 Valve released , a social network service that allows Steam users to communicate with each other on a many-to-many scale. It is accessible from both the desktop (in a web browser or the Steam client) and through an "overlay" program that can be viewed on top of 3D-accelerated games.
Notwithstanding privacy settings, a user's page includes some brief personal information, links to any 'Friends' (i.e. contacts), details of any games owned over the past fortnight including playtime, a 0-10 'Steam Rating' of activity, and links to any groups of which the user is a member.
Friends, Steam's instant messaging tool, supports both one-to-one and many-to-many conversations, held publicly or privately, and Peer-to-Peer VOIP. It provides extended information about what games each user is playing, allowing others to join their contacts in Steam-integrated multiplayer games within two clicks.
The Friends system is a popular attack vector for phishers. Complaints have also been made about the practice of 'invite spamming'.
Steam Cloud
In mid-2008 Valve announced their plans to provide Steam users with the ability to store game settings and saves on a central server. This allows users to more easily install Steam on a new computer or play Steam games on multiple computers. The process is automatic and invisible to the user, any changes to game files are propagated to the main server and newer files are automatically downloaded and used when a game is started. The first game to use this technology is Left 4 Dead but the service will eventually support all Valve games and be an option for other developers selling their games on Steam.
Steamworks
On January 28, 2008, Valve released Steamworks, a free development and publishing suite that gives developers access to every component of Steam. Steamworks can be combined with a standard Steam distribution agreement, the latter of which gives it advertising space in the Steam store but also provides Valve with a share of revenue; Audiosurf became the first game to be released in this way on February 15, 2008.
Most games using the Steamworks API also opt for a presence in the Steam store. The only known exceptions (since Valve does not make announcements about such games) are NBA 2K9 and Saints Row 2.
Promotions
"Guest Passes" are allocated to a user when he or she purchases an applicable game. The user can then share the passes with others who have not purchased the game, allowing the new user to play the game for a limited time (which varies depending on the game). Once an activated guest pass expires, the recipient will be prompted to purchase the game in order to continue playing. The number of guest passes available to a game purchaser is determined on a game-by-game basis, and they expire one month after being granted if not used.
Users who already owned either Half-Life 2 or Half-Life 2: Episode One and who purchased The Orange Box are eligible to give full copies of these games to friends. These "Gifts" do not expire. Valve does not allow these gifts to be bought, sold or traded because doing so violates the Steam Subscriber Agreement, and Valve may disable the Steam accounts of users who are believed by Valve to have done that.
"Free Weekends" are multi-player promotions in which a game becomes free to play on Steam for a weekend. When the promotion ends participant users can no longer play the game, but the game's files can remain installed on their PCs which would save time in downloading future updates if they purchase the game.
Steam has also allowed Valve to run the subscription-based Valve Cyber Café Program, which is the only legal way for a cyber café to offer Steam-based games. There are two pricing models: a flat-rate per-client fee each month, or the "Valve Time Tracker" system that offers a pay-as-you-go model.
Hardware promotions
Steam keeps a record of the hardware in the computer it is running on for various purposes, one of which is enabling hardware manufacturers to run after-sale promotions directly to their customers. Both ATi and nVidia use this feature: owners of ATi's Radeon video cards receive Half-Life 2: Lost Coast and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, as well as a discount on Half-Life 2, while owners of nVidia's GeForce video cards receive Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, Portal: First Slice (a demo of Portal, now available to all Steam users for free) and Peggle Extreme (now available to all Steam users for free).
History
Steam's development began at an uncertain date prior to 2002. Prior to "Steam", its codenames were "Grid" and "Gazelle". It was revealed to the public on 22 March 2002 at the Game Developers Conference, and was presented purely as a distribution network. To demonstrate the ease of integrating Steam to a game, Relic Entertainment had created a special version of Impossible Creatures. The game was ultimately not released on Steam, however.
The client application, Steam version 1.0, was first made available for download in 2002 during the beta period for Counter-Strike 1.6. At that time, it appeared to be a method of streamlining the patch process common in online computer games. Installation and use of the Steam program was mandatory for CS 1.6 beta testers, but Steam remained an optional component. In 2004, the World Opponent Network was shut down and replaced by Steam.
Around this time, Valve began negotiating contracts with several publishers and independent developers to release their products on Steam, typically with a pre-order discount of 10% off their MSRP. Rag Doll Kung Fu and Darwinia are two examples, and Canadian publisher Strategy First announced in December 2005 that it would be partnering with Valve for digital distribution of current and future titles.
Half-Life 2 release
On November 16 2004 Half-Life 2 was officially released. The game required activation via Steam to play the game. Later in the day of the launch, a significant number of buyers (both through Steam and retail) found themselves unable to play the game, due in part to a bottleneck of Valve's Steam system. The European authentication servers went down for a reported 5 hours before being fixed, preventing those with accounts stored on them from decrypting or playing the game they had bought. Other problems included long download times, glitches and seemingly unnecessary updates. It came second in 1UP.com's Top 5 Botched PC Gaming Launches.
Security
Many hacks sprang up following Half-Life 2's launch, each claiming to be able to circumvent Steam and enable the user to get the games for free. Valve responded to these hacks by patching the servers and disabling accounts. It is still possible to download and play some games from Steam, and the games are unrestricted for single-player, LAN play and on illegal "cracked" servers (as and when they can trick the master server).
Criticism of Steam
Privacy
Steam collects and reports anonymous metrics of its usage, stability, and performance, all, with the exception of Valve's , without notifying the user at the time of collection or offering an opt-out.
Steam is also used to report similarly anonymous and non-identifying data by several of its games. While some forms of this data are reported back to the public in aggregate form, for instance the results of the aforementioned hardware survey and gameplay statistics, other non-identifying data has been known to be collected without any indication (as is described in Valve's privacy policy). The only known example of this undisclosed collection of data has been that of the level of fragmentation of Steam's files. The data was used to justify the development of a defragmentation option within Steam to reverse the performance-degrading process. "Rather than having to guess or estimate performance bottle-necks", a Steam Update News entry said at the time, "Steam gave us the ability to precisely solve the real-world problem."
Regional restrictions and pricing
Although Steam is an entirely virtual entity, its centralized nature allows developers and publishers to geographically restrict where a game is available, and at what price.
Both regional restrictions and pricing are unpopular with Steam users affected by them, and a Steam Community group called "Rest of World" exists to try and lobby against them.
Some of the difficulties in selling a retailing game worldwide are detailed by a forum post from a member of Valve's staff:
Regional pricing is widely used by Valve to artificially ensure that prices on Steam stay comparable to or above the retail price of a game in user's area, which considering regional differences and exchange rate fluctuations can lead to dramatic differences.
On December 12, 2008, Steam began offering its products in Euros and Pound Sterling, if the user lived in Europe (including countries not lying in the Eurozone, e.g. Norway) or United Kingdom. This move was criticized heavily by Steam users and the gaming community as most prices were converted at an exchange rate of 1€ = $1 instead of the real exchange rate at that time of 1€ being $1.44 USD. In addition to that Valve started charging all European customers (except in the UK) the same VAT, meaning customers living in countries that don't collect a VAT on digital purchases (e.g. Norway) were charged the same as countries with a VAT of more than 20%.
Many customers have already started protesting against this and have started groups, diggs and a petition to spread awareness to get back their original pricing.
While Valve does not have region restrictions on their own games, they do use Steam's authentication to prevent boxed versions of their games sold in Russia and Thailand, which are priced significantly lower than elsewhere, from being used outside those territories.
System failure
It is necessary to validate every Steam game online before it can be launched, although an offline mode is available. There are no alternate methods of activation such as via telephone or fax, which causes the system to deny access to those without Internet connections. According to the Steam Subscriber Agreement, Steam's availability is not guaranteed and Valve is under no legal obligation to release an update disabling the authentication system in the event that Steam becomes permanently unavailable.
Temporary system failures may occur preventing users from activating their games. The first temporary system failure affected Europe on November 2004 just after Half-Life 2 was released, and in December 2006 the root authentication servers were unavailable due to storms in Seattle.
Forced auto-updates
By default, to play a game offline, Steam and the game itself must be fully updated. When Steam starts online, the system checks to see if there are updates available. If there are, the user is forced to wait for update process to finish before being able to play again, though games can be streamed online. These updates cannot be rolled back by the user, which prevents users with unusual or unrecognized issues reverting their software to its previous, functional state. Steam can be set to stay offline and not attempt a connection, but this offline mode has its own restrictions and limitations, including preventing games which have not been updated from running in offline mode.
Changes to minimum specifications
On June 30, 2007, users who ran Windows 98 or Windows Me were no longer allowed to run Steam or any games that previously supported those operating systems. However, only a small percentage of Steam users were affected by these changes. Installing Steam on either of these operating systems results in an error forwarding the user to the Steam support website. Additionally, users without SSE processors were warned that Source engine games would no longer function "within the next few months" if they did not upgrade their computer hardware (due to the impending release of its multiprocessor update).
Gaming sites have criticized Valve for not making Steam natively available on Mac OS X or Linux; Valve describes the system as "strictly a Windows application". Despite this, Steam can run with most of its functionality under Wine in Linux. There have been rumors that Steam and the Source Engine are being ported to other operating systems, but no plans have been announced by Valve.
Resale limitation
Games bought through Steam cannot be resold. The Steam Subscriber Agreement denies users the right to "sell, charge others for the right to use or otherwise transfer [an] account";.
Furthermore, retail purchases which have already been tied to a Steam account will not be transferred to another if the receipt presented to Valve as proof of purchase is from an "online auction website or used software vendor".
Phishing
Since Steam accounts give their owner access to all of their games on any computer, phishing is common. Usually, a user will pose as an administrator of Steam. They will inform a user that their account is to be closed unless they reveal their password for validation purposes. Valve has taken action to prevent this. The top of all Steam Friends chat windows has a note informing users to never tell their password to anyone. If a user types their password and attempts to send it, another box appears warning the user of the security risks and asking them to confirm that they want to send the message.
Despite this, phishers are often successful and accounts are stolen regularly. Valve has systems in place to return accounts to their rightful owners if contacted through their support system, but if a phisher uses cheats on the account whilst it is stolen, the account can be irreversibly banned from Valve Anti-Cheat.
See also
- List of Steam games
- Impulse (content delivery)
External links
- - Official website
- - Steamworks information
- - Web access to Steam's social network
- - Valve's official website
- - Steam category on the official VDC Wiki
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