泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌
[A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]
Past, present, and future of Steam (Part 2)
As I noted the success of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds in the Part1, Steam can be a meaningful distribution platform for domestic game developers. If you know your enemies and yourself, you will not be put at risk even in a hundred battles. So let's find out more about Steam first.
Steam is a video game distribution platform by Valve Corporation, an American video game developer and publisher, for more than 10 years from 2002 to the present. The large online distributor that is similar to a global open market has more than 200 million users worldwide and, so far, a lot of video games have been released on it.
Valve Software was originally famous for the leading game developer which made first-person shooter (FPS) games such as Half-Life and Counter-Strike, etc. In particular, Half-Life, Valve's first product, is highly acclaimed by laying the groundwork for the FPS genre at present. Both visual composition and the WASD-controls in the current first-person perspective video games are originated from the Valve's FPS game. The company is now better known as the Steam operator, however, it started the distribution service to support smooth operation and update of its another FPS Counter-Strike at the beginning.
As I mentioned earlier, Valve launched Steam to reduce server traffic, provide automatic updates, and improve the service quality of its 2002 smash hit Counter-Strike. It was closer to a streaming media and was used for Blizzard Battle.net-like purpose at that time.
It has been turned into a gaming open market, electronic software distribution (ESD), since a British indie game developer Introversion Software Limited introduced Darwinia, which was not made by Valve, through the new platform in 2005. Steam started to provide support for macOS in 2010 and Linux in 2012, respectively, which made it the largest video game digital distribution platform for PC gaming.
Steam has launched Big Picture mode for users with their TV and game controller to provide them comfortable gameplay and recently extended its service for DualShock 4 Wireless Controller for PlayStation 4. Now it's seeking a way to support console games on PlayStation and Xbox 360 and mobile games as well.
I took a look at the establishment of Steam and the history of the business briefly. I'd like to talk about the strengths and weaknesses of the platform and its characteristics in Part 3.
※ This is from Kyunghyang Games column by 泥中蟠龍 since September 2013.
(http://www.khgames.co.kr)
Translation by Kim Ki-hui
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