Valve has shared some insight in their 20th anniversary documentary for Half-Life 2, on something that you may not have even realized – or remembered – was even related.
As it turns out, Valve CEO Gabe Newell was already conceiving Steam at the same time that the studio was making Half-Life 2. Valve cited their prior experience with Team Fortress Classic and Counter-Strike in informing their plans to make their own digital distribution PC platform in Steam.
And since some of our readers were literally not even born at this time, both Team Fortress Classic and Counter-Strike were originally mods based on the original Half-Life. Team Fortress Classic never made it to retail, while Counter-Strike did originally see distribution digitally.
Around this time, Valve’s relationship with their publisher Sierra had deteriorated to the point that they brought them and their parent company, Vivendi Universal, to court. It was clear that Gabe was thinking then that they would be best able to manage their company’s future by selling games directly to their fans themselves.
But, that didn’t mean they had to go digital only. Gabe was actually of the frame of mind that they didn’t want to deal with retailers anymore. While Gabe’s vision was clearly forward looking in terms of digital distribution being the future of gaming, there’s something remarkable about how strongly he still feels about having to deal with physical retailers.
To quote Gabe directly:
“It was a very weird time. I don’t think people understand how many times we would go to people and say; “No, you will be able to distribute software over the internet.”
And have people just say; “No, it will never happen.” I’m not talking about one or two people. I mean like 99 % of the companies we talked to said: “It will never happen. Your retail sales force will never let it happen.”
But also people would say, “Users aren’t gonna want this”, right? People want physical copy. There were so many bad faith arguments that were being made. Retail sales is not the goal, right?
It’s actually an impediment. It’s somebody who sits between you and the customer.”
Valve would go on to launch Steam, mostly with staff they hired from an Alaskan IT company called Applied Microsystems. And Half-Life 2 would go on to be the first game to be distributed using Steam. Even though Half-Life 2 made it to retail, it was also the first game to require Steam to run.
And with that, Half-Life 2 helped make Steam a success, which also helped kill off physical retail for PC games. To be clear, many other things happened in the twenty years between. In fact, Valve briefly experimented with offering retail PC games compatible with Steam, using their Steamworks API.
But today, Steamworks PC disc games are no longer made. Valve themselves have doubled down on digital distribution with their Steam Deck line of handheld gaming consoles. Some gamers may argue that they are ultimately better off this way, as they no longer get stuck with games that were released broken on disc, for example.
But the game industry’s shift has also meant the end of used PC games after a certain point, and these also came with serious consequences to video game preservation, more serious than Nintendo suing the latest Switch pirate illegally selling their games.
Remarkably, it also took twenty years before Valve was forced to explicitly tell Steam users that they don’t own their games. That speaks to how popular and all-encompassing Steam became, which is good for Valve. But we can finally admit, that it has been bad for us gamers, as consumers who gave up their own rights to their games, eagerly and willingly.
