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Steam is a content delivery, digital rights management and multiplayer system developed by Valve Software. It is currently used to distribute and serve multiplayer games for Half-Life and Half-Life 2. Steam replaces WON, which was originally used for Half-Life multiplayer games.
History
Valve announced Steam in 2002. At the time, it looked to be a method of streamlining the patch process common in online computer games. Steam was later revealed as a replacement for much of the dated framework of WON and Half-Life multiplayer and also as a distribution system for entire games.
There is a Linux version of Steam, but is used to manage accounts for dedicated game servers, and client-end games cannot be played through Linux.
In the legal battle between Valve and their publisher Vivendi Universal Games, VUG argued that Steam is an attempt to circumvent their publishing agreement. Valve's Doug Lombardi revealed in October 2004 that Half-Life 2 requires activation via Steam in order to play. When Half-Life 2 hit some store shelves earlier than its intended release date of November 16, Valve reported that Vivendi prevented them from activating the Steam authentication servers until the 16th.
Criticism of Steam
On November 16, Half-Life 2 was released at retail and over Steam. Both forms of installing required a user to log into the Steam network. As many critics predicted, Steam's authorization servers became overloaded with traffic as people installing the game attempted to connect to the Steam servers. Unable to cope with the number of connections, the servers appeared to be offline for a great amount of people. Europe's Steam servers did fail, with error messages saying "Your subscription to Half-Life 2 Retail Standard has not been completed, because Steam servers are currently unable to process the transaction. You won't be able to play Half-Life 2 Retail Standard until the subscription process is complete." [1] (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=19710)
Even now, many dial-up users resent the difficulties involved in launching Steam-supported products - compulsory downloads of hour-long duration are still the norm.
Current
Products currently available through Steam include Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source, Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, Half-Life, a Source engine based version of the original Half-Life, the Source SDK and several mods. Source-based projects available in the future include Day of Defeat: Source.
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