Yahoo, Microsoft weren't interested in Steam

PALGN News | Says Valve, after going off and making it themselves.

Back when Steam was just an idea floating around the Valve offices, the company approached Yahoo and Microsoft to put the concept in motion. The industry giants rubbished it, so Valve just went and made it themselves.

The revelation came in a GamesIndustry.biz interview with Doug Lombardi, marketing bigwig at Valve. Apparently, the idea for Steam was dismissed as being too far into the future.

"You know, we went around to Yahoo, Microsoft...Who else was around at that time? Probably Real Networks and anybody who seemed like a likely candidate to build something like Steam," noted Lombardi. "We basically had our feature list that we wanted. We wanted auto-updating, we wanted better anti-piracy, better anti-cheat, and selling the games over the wire was something we came up with later.

"We went around to everybody and said 'Are you guys doing anything like this? We need this for our games, and therefore other people are going to need it someday soon.' And everyone was like: 'Blah, blah, blah... That's a million miles in the future.' So we said 'We need it now' and everyone said 'Well, we can't help you'," Lombardi reminisced.

"So we just went off and started doing it. Once we pick something we just start going after it and we're not really too concerned with what other people are doing because that's just an easy way to get distracted."

Lombardi was also asked about the possibility of Valve selling games through Xbox Live or PSN.

"We'd love to do that. Right now it's something we'd love to do. I'd love to sell Portal on Xbox live. [But] The platform holders aren't doing that right now. There's a size limit and all kinds of other things. We've asked them. We said we were open to it. So, it's a decision of the platform holder and how they want to make the games available and how much bandwidth they want to, you know...

"I think it's a trade off. We'll see it, one day. It always happens once its been proven and I think its been proven now on Steam, so I'm sure it'll migrate back to the consoles just like everything else does."

Steam has been a massive success, supporting a community housing 14 million accounts as well as selling more than 300 games.

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25 Comments

Aftershock

4 years ago

Microsoft really **** me sometimes.

They say no to this, and now they are trying to push games for windows live. Something i would like to see though, would be a dedicated gamertag-style name across all steam games, and the same kind of online across all their games.

Unification ftw.

1mpr3gn4t0r

4 years ago

I don't like Steam.
- they can just mess with your account as they see fit, like how they disabled my Orange Box for no reason nor any warning
- the auto update sucks, and does it without your permission or when you don't want to and you are forced to. If I'm low on ISP download quota, I don't want to be updating 2GB patches, but still want to play the game.
- their support is horrendous, they have not once answered any of my support queries emails over the past 2 years
- the auto updating fails, and you are forced re download the whole game again (using quota) This is why we have backups, but you can't backup Steam. Their whole auto updating system is flawed.
- you can't separate out games, or swap/share games with friends. once a game is in your account, that's it. or sell them to raise money for new games
- games are sometimes very expensive, more than their retail counterparts with physical media, manuals etc (eg CoD4)

Benza

4 years ago

I won't buy **** off steam untill they start treating Australia with anything other then veiled contempt.

I know they claim that its up to the game companies to decide but thats bull **** its there system they should enforce some sort of fairness.

Not to mention having to install Steam to play a god damm demo of Half Life 2.

Jellyfish

4 years ago

Benza wrote

Not to mention having to install Steam to play a god damm demo of Half Life 2.

Exactly, Steam is only a "success" because it's forced down you throats. The excuse it curbs piracy is moot, it's just as easy to get a playable copy of a Steam game without Steam as it is with a Steamless game. Hell these copies are better than the original because they use far less system resources.

Personally I refuse to install Steam because in my opinion it's no better than mal/spyware. It typifies everything that is wrong with the current Windows OSes.

Aftershock

4 years ago

1mpr3gn4t0r wrote

You can create backups of the games that you have installed. Right click on the game and go into backup game files.

GooberMan

4 years ago

1mpr3gn4t0r wrote

- they can just mess with your account as they see fit, like how they disabled my Orange Box for no reason nor any warning

Common complaint. Mostly concerning people who imported the game from out of their region. I guess not enough people in Australia have banded together to bring an anti-competition lawsuit against Valve.

1mpr3gn4t0r wrote

- the auto update sucks, and does it without your permission or when you don't want to and you are forced to. If I'm low on ISP download quota, I don't want to be updating 2GB patches, but still want to play the game.

When have you ever gotten a 2GB patch? I fail to see how keeping completely up to date is an issue, especially in an online game where multiple versions have been a nightmare in the past.

1mpr3gn4t0r wrote

- their support is horrendous, they have not once answered any of my support queries emails over the past 2 years

Yet they actively interact with anyone willing on the steampowered forums.

1mpr3gn4t0r wrote

- the auto updating fails, and you are forced re download the whole game again (using quota) This is why we have backups, but you can't backup Steam. Their whole auto updating system is flawed.

What Aftershock said. Define fail as well, as you can pause and resume your download without issue so I'd assume there'd be broken connection checks in there.

1mpr3gn4t0r wrote

- you can't separate out games, or swap/share games with friends. once a game is in your account, that's it. or sell them to raise money for new games

Wrong. License transferral is allowed, but you have to ask specifically for it.

1mpr3gn4t0r wrote

- games are sometimes very expensive, more than their retail counterparts with physical media, manuals etc (eg CoD4)

That's entirely up to the publisher, not the Steam platform itself. Before the publisher stepped in, CoD4 was significantly less than Australian retail. Of course, if you're talking about an imported copy again, it was only slightly more (ie around ten bucks) than what play-asia were offering.

Well that sounded a bit more defendy than I expected, but now you have an informed opinion.

EDIT: while I'm here, have you ever considered the "Go Offline" option?

Benza

4 years ago

GooberMan wrote

If the publisher is abusing it then Valve should step in to prevent that.
No sorry they don't get a pass on that.

GooberMan

4 years ago

Benza wrote

If the publisher is abusing it then Valve should step in to prevent that.
No sorry they don't get a pass on that.

Imagine you're running a company, selling whatever product you wish. Unless you're making that product yourself, you're getting it from someone else and they set the price. One day, they double the price of the product. Now, do you continue selling it at it's original price or do you increase your price to reflect the change?

Valve's in a similar position. Their choice is simple: they either sell it for a price the publishers set; or they don't sell it at all. As a consumer, you have more choices: buy the retail box; buy the digital download; or import it. Without Valve, the second option would most likely not be there. They have a successful digital distribution platform, but unlike Microsoft they don't have eleventy billion dollars in the bank.

Now you have another choice: shoot the messenger (Valve) or the General (Activision)?

hexen

4 years ago

14 million accounts?

Make that 19 million.

Black Wolf

4 years ago

I am one of those people that love Steam. One advantage of it is that you pay for the product you want and it gets delivered to you straight away, or depending on how big the file size, a couple of days.

I always hated Microsoft, from the day I got my very first PC. Now, apart from their operating system, I refuse to use their major software titles, and even I obtained Windows from my computer supplier, not from the software store.

Skiller

4 years ago

GooberMan wrote

1mpr3gn4t0r wrote

When have you ever gotten a 2GB patch? I fail to see how keeping completely up to date is an issue, especially in an online game where multiple versions have been a nightmare in the past.

EDIT: while I'm here, have you ever considered the "Go Offline" option?

Just to add to that if you use offline mode you can play any single player games with whatever patch version you currently have. And if you were going to play online without the latest patch then you would have no one to play against anyway so it's ALWAYS best to have the latest patch for multiplayer.

1mpr3gn4t0r

4 years ago

Thanks for your thoughtful responses!

When have you ever gotten a 2GB patch? I fail to see how keeping completely up to date is an issue, especially in an online game where multiple versions have been a nightmare in the past.
--------------------
If you haven't loaded up Steam or one of your Steam accounts in a while, you get a huge backlog. The point I was making was that I should be able to choose when I want to update (like during offpeak ISP quota session) rather than when Steam wants me to.

Yet they actively interact with anyone willing on the steampowered forums.
------------------
Not to my experience, I tried both their Support and their forums and no responses ever.

What Aftershock said. Define fail as well, as you can pause and resume your download without issue so I'd assume there'd be broken connection checks in there.
-------------------
My TF2 updated, I think around end of Dec07, and they screwed it up, such that my TF2 would not load - it would stick in an infinite loop and needed to be ctrl-alt-deleted. I posted on the forums and sent support calls. No response. Forums also indicated I was not the only one with this issue. So I basically couldn't play TF2 until the next update, which was a few weeks to a month away. This shouldn't happen to a game that I purchased, and I should be able to play it when I want where I want. Or they should give me my money back. Especially it was their fault - I didn't request the patch, they forced it on me, and they broke it, and they didn't take responsibility for it. It was working fine before the patch.

Wrong. License transferral is allowed, but you have to ask specifically for it.
-----------------
If you have to ask for it, then I count that as not allowed, or at least very limited. And the fact that they have never replied to any of my requests, I doubt they will reply to a request to transfer license either.

That's entirely up to the publisher, not the Steam platform itself. Before the publisher stepped in, CoD4 was significantly less than Australian retail. Of course, if you're talking about an imported copy again, it was only slightly more (ie around ten bucks) than what play-asia were offering.
----------------
For what you get (eg just a permission to download), the games are pretty expensive.

while I'm here, have you ever considered the "Go Offline" option?
---------------
Yeah, that's also fraught with danger, considering you need to first go online, to go offline, which sort of defeats the purpose of it in the first place.

Oh, someone above mentioned the backup option - I've never paid attention that, thanks. I'll read up on it and see how it all works.

GooberMan

4 years ago

1mpr3gn4t0r wrote

The point I was making was that I should be able to choose when I want to update (like during offpeak ISP quota session) rather than when Steam wants me to.

As I mentioned, you can pause downloads. Wanting to play it immediately though, well, you're screwed for multiplayer if you're trying to avoid peak downloads (which is also a good thing going with the "patch nightmare" environment mentioned earlier). Single player will work well with the Offline method.

1mpr3gn4t0r wrote

If you have to ask for it, then I count that as not allowed, or at least very limited.

For very good reasons. It's no secret that Steam accounts have been hacked in to, and IIRC there have been login/password lists swiped from their servers. If you're account gets hacked and license transferrals are freely available, what happens when you get back in to your account to find out all your games are gone? License transferrals were around before I knew of Steam hacking though, so that's basically just a convenient benefit to the original decision. I'm no online security expert though and therefore can't offer an alternative. No system is foolproof.

1mpr3gn4t0r wrote

For what you get (eg just a permission to download), the games are pretty expensive.

Sure, if you're American. Most of the games on Steam are priced rather well for the Australian market. The boxed versions of Valve games these days are even better examples, as they don't ship with much apart from the discs these days. Further, not only are you getting permission to download, you're getting permission to download it again and again and again if you lose your original copy - security you don't get with physical media.

Jedi.Jell

4 years ago

Brendan wrote

Steam has been a massive success, supporting a community housing 14 million accounts as well as selling more than 300 games.

A whole 300?

Jedi.Jell

4 years ago

GooberMan wrote

I'm no online security expert though and therefore can't offer an alternative. No system is foolproof.

Credit card validation?

Puddingfork

4 years ago

Jedi.Jell wrote

Brendan wrote

Steam has been a massive success, supporting a community housing 14 million accounts as well as selling more than 300 games.

A whole 300?

crap phrasing but I think they mean 300 different games, dw I needed IRC to help me understand.

GooberMan

4 years ago

Jedi.Jell wrote

Credit card validation?

Would you use a service that required you to credit card validate every single thing you did? There's enough credit card fraud in the world without holding up a big sign saying "HEY! Our service trades credit card data ALL THE TIME and not just during transactions."

Further, you don't need a credit card to purchase games over Steam these days. You need a solution that covers all bases.

EDIT: I may as well put a disclaimer on every post I've made in this thread. I think the Steam application itself is a bloated piece of crap that was written poorly and hogs way too many resources for what it does. The service it represents though is something I have very few problems with (the fact that Valve can't do much about external publisher price-fixing for example).

Benza

4 years ago

GooberMan wrote

Benza wrote

If the publisher is abusing it then Valve should step in to prevent that.
No sorry they don't get a pass on that.

They can set terms and conditions for allowing other companies to use there service though.

Take this as a metaphor then, you run a shopping center, other companies rent space inside to sell games to people. One company has decided that it will charge one price for locals, then double price for anyone from out of state to buy the games. They're comming to the same store, buying the same product. You, being in charge of the shopping center are in a position of power to tell them to cut that **** out.

Skiller

4 years ago

1mpr3gn4t0r wrote

while I'm here, have you ever considered the "Go Offline" option?
---------------
Yeah, that's also fraught with danger, considering you need to first go online, to go offline, which sort of defeats the purpose of it in the first place.

No actually, you dont. Granted there's no "proper" way to run steam straight to offline mode but if you block steam from the net (use a firewall to block it or pull out network/modem connection) then when you run it steam will pop up a dialog that allows you to run in offline mode.

GooberMan

4 years ago

Benza wrote

Take this as a metaphor then, you run a shopping center, other companies rent space inside to sell games to people. One company has decided that it will charge one price for locals, then double price for anyone from out of state to buy the games. They're comming to the same store, buying the same product. You, being in charge of the shopping center are in a position of power to tell them to cut that s*** out.

You don't know anything about running a business, do you? Renting a storefront and having direct control over an independent business entity are two completely different concepts. The owners of the shopping centre are responsible for exactly that - the centre itself, not for the products each individual business sells.

Benza

4 years ago

I understand that they don't have direct controll over the companies, and they can't tell them they have to charge a fair price. However they do have a choice over whom they let use there store. The companies are making alot of money off of steam and to be prevented from selling on steam would be a big hit to there pockets and would probbably make them care.

GooberMan

4 years ago

So you'd also understand that they're running a global operation where Australia is just a small percentage of their total market coverage. If one company chooses to charge a price for one product more inline with their shelf retail presence in this country, why exactly does that mean Valve should drop the entire company? I've let my wallet do the talking in this particular instance - I'm not going to buy CoD4 until I can pick it up for $20.

Also take in to consideration that Ubisoft and THQ sell their software over steam - but not in the Australian market. Another decision Valve has no power to stop, but needs to take in to consideration in a business sense when it comes to the big picture. They're at least selling the games somewhere and making a profit out of it. We'll see what that means in the future, but for now it's the publishers that are treating Australia with thinly veiled contempt that you should be worried about (just look at Valve's prices for their own products).

Rabscallion

4 years ago

Gooberman how much does steam pay you

GooberMan

4 years ago

As much as I'd like to neg that post too, I'll skip it. Online distribution is something I've been trying to solve myself on my own time for the past four or five years. The Steam program itself is horrible, but the service/platform is something I look at and think "I couldn't do it better by myself."

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