Steam launched on September 12, 2003, authoritative it 20 years old today, and Valve has accustomed that anniversary in the aforementioned way it consistently acknowledges the access of time: with a sale. All Valve amateur are on auction today for the The Beef 20th Ceremony Celebration, as able-bodied as a few amateur from added publishers, and there are some chargeless Beef contour accouterments in the Points Shop.
Valve has additionally angry the Beef store's accomplishments "army green" like it was in 2003, back it looked like this:
Back then, Beef was mainly a apparatus for Counter-Strike afterlight and matchmaking, but back Half-Life 2 came out in 2004, it had to be angry to a Beef account, and that absolutely apparent the alpha of the Beef abundance as we apperceive it now. It additionally fabricated bodies appealing mad: The abstraction that we bare online accounts to admission amateur added than EverQuest was the alarming gaming trend of the 2000s. 20 years later, bodies get mad back a bold isn't accessible on Steam, so Valve did appealing able-bodied for itself.
Steam alien a lot of conveniences, too, like auto-updating and matchmaking features, and ultimately led the gaming industry's alteration from discs to downloads whether bad-tempered old concrete media-loving PC gamers admired it or not. It took years for consoles to bolt up, appropriately why we use "downloadable content" to accredit to baby downloadable expansions alike back downloading absolute amateur was already the barometer on PC back the appellation was invented.
For Steam's 20th birthday, Valve has put calm a timeline with some added fun $.25 of Beef trivia. Appropriate at the alpha there's the admonition that fangame Codename: Gordon was technically the aboriginal third-party bold on Steam. The 2D Beam bold was produced by Nuclearvision, a developer that no best exists, and Codename: Gordon isn't listed on Beef anymore, but you can still download it by entering the afterward URL into a browser: steam://install/92.
The timeline additionally addendum that the aboriginal big Beef auction was December 2007. Today's 20th Ceremony Auction isn't on the calibration of one of those melancholia Beef sales, but a accord that sticks out to me is Mass Aftereffect Allegorical Edition at its everyman amount ever—just $11.99 for all three Accumulation Aftereffect RPGs—in case Starfield's absolution has gotten you in the affection for added interstellar adventuring. Befitting with that theme, Elite Dangerous is aloof $7.49, which isn't absolutely its everyman amount ever, but is close.
Almost every Valve game is on sale, too, so if you haven't played Aperture or Aperture 2, you can grab them for a dollar each. Valve puts its own amateur on auction all the time, though—check our Steam auction dates adviser for advice on the abutting big melancholia sales.
