Valve Corporation is an American video game developer, publisher and digital distribution company headquartered in Bellevue, Washington. This company, founded in 1996, created some popular games like Half Life, before the creation, in 2003, of one of their most well-known digital game distribution platforms, Steam.
The earliest versions of Steam contained games for the Valve Corporation. Currently, there are over 781 games on Steam, which Users can play and enjoy.
Steam acts as an online marketplace and it essentially caters to the gamer audience and has to attract the game development companies and studios. It is more of a shared success where more sellers mean an increased number of users approaching the platform.
Steam currently has over 30,000 games listed on its platform, over 90 million monthly active users and a billion registered accounts as of February 2020.
Since its creation in 2003, Steam has developed several initiatives in different areas. However, this section will focus on those who allowed a main development on Steam as a platform and overall, as a business.
One of the most effective Initiatives was the introduction of new free games, which were not only produced by the Valve Corporation, that is to say, some games were produced by many other companies and individuals. By letting Steam’s key partnerships deliver games and content from other publishing companies and indie game developers (“Steamworks Partner Program”, n.d.), it triggered a boost on games' sales, drawing more customers. Besides attracting customers, the initiative helped Steam to become one of the largest firms in the games industries, and not only in the games’ industry, but economically. It is said that the developers (those who “post” their games into Steam) of those games were earning up to 40% of the sales’ benefits (Steam would take the rest). This allowed a boost on the game production, allowing the appearance of some of the most well-known games that exist at the moment.
As the games were free to get and install, it is likely that the games would include some items that can be bought inside the game. One of these free games became more popular than others. One example is World of Tanks (WoT), which is an online mutiplayer game that consist on tanks battles across many different maps. This Website includes a section on the menu (the section is called example) explaining what is that game, and how it became popular. Besides, it we explain the required software that the game might need, which supports the next initiative.
One problem that Steam found out is that not all the games have the same requirements for playing them, that is to say, some games might need more space on the memory or a better Graphics Card or RAM to play and enjoy them at its full potential. For that reason, Valve Corporation developed an initiative for creating Hardware; which is available for Users; that, for example, would allow players to use to play their games on a television or with controllers, instead of a setup. This option allowed Steam to sell their own games, other developers’ games and Hardware exclusively on Steam.
One aspect that Steam has developed in many games is its Multiplayer Option. It basically is a multiplayer back-end is powered by a robust matchmaking that gives Users more features, like the “built-in voice” function, allowing Users to create chat rooms to allow Users to work together. Steam developed this initiative to allow Users to communicate to one another, share experienced and being able to use Steam in new ways, not just games. Even though Steam’s communication settings are not as developed as the ones from other services; like Discord; this option sets Steam as multi-option platform, differentiating it from others like Epic Games or Discord, which are more focused on games or communication.
Besides, Steams has developed ‘groups’, where Users can access to share their common passions, tastes, how to complete a section of the game, news or simply chat about anything they like. With this groups, Steam wanted to provide some communication among players without needing to be friends on Steam. As it has been said, the main goal of this initiative is to improve a system where Users use Steam in many different ways, so Users do not have to look to other websites or systems.