Steam (content delivery)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 The Steam 3.0 user interface | |
| Maintainer: | Valve Corporation |
| Stable release: | November 21 2006
API: v006 [+/-] |
| Preview release: | N/A [+/-] |
| OS: | Microsoft Windows |
| Use: | Content Delivery |
| Website: | steamgames.com |
Steam is a content delivery, digital rights management, multiplayer and communications service and platform developed by Valve Corporation for digital entertainment. It is currently used to digitally distribute and manage games including Half-Life and Half-Life 2.
Steam also replaces WON, the original authentication framework for Half-Life multiplayer games and a number of other now largely or entirely defunct titles.
Contents |
[edit] Purpose
Steam exists for a number of reasons. Its initial inception was borne from Valve's experiences of releasing patches for Half-Life, their first product: they found the release times greatly stressful and disruptive, and were frustrated that only a small minority of their users were even aware of each update's existence [citation needed]. Furthermore, the sheer amount of content that was being produced by both Valve and their community, following the explosion of modding under their lead, led to physical bandwidth bottlenecks that also limited distribution.
At some point, perhaps from the beginning, the design expanded to encompass the digital distribution of complete games, removing more bottlenecks still - this time middle men like publishers and distributors - and in the process becoming a self-contained platform for multi-player authentication. It is this aspect of Steam that the service is best known for today.
Today Steam has expanded further, and now includes anti-cheat and instant messaging functionality. It distributes media such as trailers and occasionally independently-produced short films.
Despite popular opinion, and perhaps their past actions, Valve does not presently seem overly concerned with using Steam DRM to combat Copyright infringement of their software. <ref name="steam-at-agds">Asian Game Developers Summit 2005, Day One. GameDev.net (11 October 2005). Retrieved on 7 September, 2006.</ref> Their future plans focus more on making the platform more useful for developers and customers rather than more frustrating for anyone breaching copyright on their games. <ref name="steam-vs-wow">Steam vs. World of Warcraft. The Steam Review (3 September 2005). Retrieved on 7 September, 2006.</ref>
[edit] History
Image:Steam presentation gdc2002.jpg
Steam's development began at an uncertain date prior to 2002. Prior to 'Steam', its codenames were 'Grid' and 'Gazelle'. <ref name="codenames">Talk:GCF. Valve Developer Community (9 October 2005). Retrieved on 7 September, 2006.</ref> It was revealed to the public on 22 March 2002 at the Game Developers Conference <ref name="steam-announced">GDC 2002: Valve unveils Steam. GameSpot.com (22 March 2002). Retrieved on 7 September, 2006.</ref>, and was presented purely as a distribution network: no mention of purchases was made. During his presentation Gabe Newell claimed that "consumers [could] purchase and start applications faster than if they install them from a CD" and cited the "[elimination of] the overhead costs of traditional physical distribution" (GameSpot quotes). To demonstrate the ease of integrating Steam to a game, Relic Entertainment had created a special version of their then-unreleased game Impossible Creatures (Relic has not had any further involvement with Steam).
Two future Steam components - 'Tracker', now Friends, and the server browser, had actually been released prior to the GDC presentation, along with the Counter-Strike 1.4 beta on 27 February 2002. <ref name="tracker-preview">Valves Tracker. CS Extreme (7 March 2002). Retrieved on 7 September, 2006.</ref> These components and their VGUI display engine were eventually to be integrated into the main client.
- Section under construction; disjoint follows.
This possibility was poignantly highlighted by the legal battle between Valve and their publisher Vivendi Universal Games, where VUG argued that Steam was an attempt to circumvent their publishing agreement. However, on November 29, 2004, Valve announced that the courts had granted their motion of summary judgement in this case.
The client application, Steam version 1.0, was first made available for download in 2002 during the beta period for Counter-Strike 1.4. At that time, it appeared to be a method of streamlining the patch process common in online computer games. Installation and use of the Steam program was mandatory for CS 1.4 beta testers, but Steam remained an optional component. Some time after CS 1.5 was released, Steam and WON users were allowed to play against each other on the same servers. Later, Steam version 2.0, complete with a new VGUI2 interface previously only seen on the Tracker component (which then became Friends), was released along with the Counter-Strike 1.6 beta. In late 2003, Steam was 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.
Valve's Doug Lombardi announced in October 2004 that Half-Life 2 required activation via Steam in order to play the game. When Half-Life 2 arrived at some stores earlier than its intended release date of November 16, Valve reported that their contract with Vivendi prevented them from activating the Steam authentication servers until the 16th.
Recently, Valve has been negotiating contracts with several publishers and independent developers to release their products on Steam, typically with a pre-order discount of 10% off their MSRP. Rag Doll Kung Fu and Darwinia are two recent examples, and Canadian publisher Strategy First announced in December 2005 that it would be partnering with Valve for digital distribution of current and future titles.
On Friday, March 24,2006, Valve has implemented a column under the "My Games" tab in which it states the Metacritic score (metascore) for each of the game. The Metascore is calculated through an average of the scores given to it by other critics, such as IGN.com and Gamespot.com.
[edit] Payment Methods
Steam purchases are made through the client software, with an encrypted connection. To date all transactions finish in America, incurring an international payment charge with some banks, and similarly all prices are listed in USD rather than the user's local currency. Furthermore, tax is not applied to the quoted price until the very last stage of the purchase, after the user has entered their billing information.
Other caveats include:
- Users are required to enter their billing details from scratch for each purchase, as Steam will not store them locally.
- Due to Steam's ephemeral nature and susceptibility to fraud, billing details must be exact matches.<ref name="billingfailurereasons">Why was my purchase declined?. "Steam Credit Card Purchase and Billing FAQ (17 October 2006). Retrieved on 2006-10-21.</ref>
- Only one-off purchases are available: while all purchases are legally subscriptions, and while subscriptions are fully supported, no current consumer product or package offer either requires or accepts recurring payment.
- "As with most software products", Steam does not provide refunds.<ref name="no-refunds">Can I get a refund?. "Steam Non-Refund Policy" (25 October 2006). Retrieved on 2006-10-25.</ref>
- If a credit card issues a chargeback, all of the user's accounts will be disabled until the matter can be resolved through the Support system.<ref name="disable-on-chargeback">Why is my Steam account disabled?. Steam Support (17 October 2006). Retrieved on 2206-10-26.</ref>
- Steam now includes Paypal as a method of Payment.
Today Steam accepts credit cards, "debit cards which bear the Visa or Mastercard logo"<ref name="acceptedpayment">What forms of payment are accepted on Steam?. Steam Credit Card Purchase and Billing FAQ (17 October 2006). Retrieved on 2006-10-21.</ref> and Paypal, including, unofficially, Visa Electron. Direct wire transfer.<ref name="newpayment">PayPal and Wire Transfer arriving soon. "The Steam Review" (August 27 2006). Retrieved on 2006-10-06.</ref> The new billing methods are expected, by Valve and the Steam community, to increase sales and open up new regions (where credit/debit cards are perhaps not so common), but will also remove the pseudo-age restriction imposed by the requirement of credit cards, which are rarely widely available below a country's age of adulthood.
[edit] Valve Cyber Café Program
Steam has also allowed Valve to run a subscription-based cyber café program [1], the Valve Cyber Café Program, which is now the only legal way for a cyber café to offer Steam-based games. There are two pricing models, a flat-rate per-client fee each month or the upcoming 'Valve Time Tracker' system that offers a pay-as-you-go model.
[edit] Program benefits
In addition to what is offered by the regular Steam client (see above), the Cybercafé program:
- Is cheaper in the short term
- Gives access to all participating titles from the Steam library, including new releases, for a fixed fee
- Gives access to the Cybercafé Administration Server (CAS)
- Updates are downloaded once to the server then distributed to clients via LAN
- Licenses can be used on any computer on the premises
- Stores a customer's saved games and configurations as a permanent profile
- Free tournament licenses
- Promotional materials
- Account protection against bannings and thefts
- Priority support
- Optional entry in the Cyber Café Directory
[edit] Program drawbacks
- The flat-rate fee model can end up more expensive in cafés where Steam games are not often played
- Not all games can be offered. Not all of Valve's clients agree to café distribution, and currently only around half of the Steam library is available.
[edit] Criticism of Steam
[edit] Privacy concerns
The matter of privacy has been raised, as it is necessary to log in and validate with Steam online at least once in order to play any Steam game. While there is an offline mode available, critics point out that it can only be accessed when not connected to the Internet: there is no command line parameter to force it. There are also no alternate methods of activation such as via telephone or fax. These issues have caused those with computers with sporadic or no internet access often to be denied from registering their purchased Steam products.
While it is not widely discussed, Steam also collects and reports anonymous and non-identifying metrics of its usage, stability, and performance. Steam is also used to report similarly anonymous and non-identifying data by several of its games. While some forms of this data are reported back to the public in aggregate form, for instance hardware specifications and gameplay statistics, other non-identifying data has been known to be collected without any indication (and with the Steam EULA absolving Valve of responsibility).
To date the only known example of this undisclosed collection of data has been that of the level of internal fragmentation of Steam's files. The data was used to justify the development of an internal defragmentation utility to reverse the performance-degrading process. "Rather than having to guess or estimate performance bottle-necks", a Steam Update News entry said at the time, "Steam gave us the ability to precisely solve the real-world problem."<ref name="defrag-news">Wednesday May 31, 2006 - Steam client update released. Steam Update News (31 May 2006). Retrieved on 2006-10-26.</ref>
The full extent of undisclosed data collection is unknown.
[edit] Possibility of system failure
One large question in the minds of many gamers is how Steam products will be activated if Steam is no longer available. Valve head Gabe Newell made the following statement on the issue: <ref name="gabeonauth">I emailed Gabe Newell about what would happen if Steam went down. "Steam User Forums" (6 September 2005). Retrieved on 2006-10-06.</ref>
| If you right click on a game in Steam, you'll see that you can back up the files yourself. Unless there was some situation I don't understand, we would presumably disable authentication before any event that would preclude the authentication servers from being available.
We've tested disabling authentication and it works. |
Early in Steam's life a common and related concern was that it was to become a subscription-based 'pay-to-play' service at some point in the future. Valve have repeatedly denied this and pronounced such fears as unfounded, and indeed for them to retrospectively alter EULAs in such a manner - given the requirement for Steam authentication - would be illegal.
[edit] Resale of Steam games
Steam activation makes it more difficult to sell a legally acquired game to a third party, due to the unsuitability of current proof of purchase laws. Steam accounts, being ephemeral, do not constitute legal proof of purchases and cannot currently be transferred. Selling a boxed game which uses Steam also requires the buyer to send an image of the CD key to Valve to have it tied to their own account (Vivendi-published games famously required a $10 fee for the process); games bought through Steam itself are completely non-transferrable.
This is of obvious advantage to the game producer, as it dampens the secondary market of their titles. As such, the restrictions raise ethical and possibly legal questions in some minds.
Valve is not aggressive towards account transfers, but strongly advise against them as they are a major source of fraud within their systems.
[edit] Forced auto-updating
Another commonly debated issue is that of Steam's auto-update model. By default, to play a game offline, Steam and the game itself must be fully updated, and updates are consistently checked for when starting Steam while online. Whenever there is an update available, the user is forced to wait for update process to finish before being able to play again, online or offline. The worst affected are dial-up internet subscribers: not only are they the ones who are most likely to use offline mode, but they are the ones least capable of updating. Equally, once applied an update cannot be rolled back by the user; thus, outside of offline mode, even problematic updates can be mandatory.
Content streaming, the ability to launch games before all data is stored locally, was designed to nullify this issue, but is rarely used properly even by Valve themselves and does not function when offline.
[edit] Auto-updates and third-party mods
The auto-update model can also affect the large mod community surrounding Steam games. Several times in the past an update to a game has damaged its third-party mods, sometimes to the point at which they cannot run. However, this issue has largely been eliminated with Steam's beta test function, which allows mod makers to test an update themselves before it is released to the wider community. The process relies on the modders to spot errors, and is as such far from infallible (an issue with one update, which crippled Garry's Mod, was well-known during the beta period but not addressed by Garry or Valve until after release), but has in general improved the situation considerably. With a recent update that broke several popular mods, some posts in the Valve user forums have indicated that it may be the modders' faults for not using "official" software to create their mods. <ref name="updatesbrokemods">Stop killing 3rd party mods with updates.. Steam User Forums (12 September 2006). Retrieved on 2006-10-05.</ref>
[edit] Recent and notable centralised issues
Occasionally a centralised issue appears, which prevents users from accessing the service or parts of the service through problems directly under Valve's control.
- Early Instability
- Up until early/mid 2004, Steam was a very unstable system in all regards. Catastrophic crashes, constant connectivity issues and general glitches prevailed. It was during this period that negative feedback concerning Steam was at its peak, particularly when the former WON validation system was shut down (despite warning WON users for months prior that this was going to happen) – while the service did not cope with the extra load in an unusually bad way, the huge influx of new users increased the volume of complaints immensely.
- Half-Life 2 Release
- On November 16, 2004, Half-Life 2 was officially released. While the launch was mainly regarded as successful, later in the day a significant number of buyers (both through Steam and retail) found themselves unable to play the game, due in part to a bottleneck of Valve's Steam system. The European authentication servers went down for about 5 hours before being fixed, preventing those with accounts stored on them from decrypting or playing the game they had bought. The problem was, according to Steam engineer Taylor Sherman, "a little more involved" than lack of bandwidth. He predicted that the problem would never happen again.
- Pre-order Credit-card Problems
- Around September and October 2005, unsubstantiated numbers of customers who had pre-ordered games through Steam found their purchases invalidated, with the reason given being 'incorrect information' when entering their credit card details. Despite their protestations this was in fact true: the AVS system used by Valve's bank required an exact match for details entered in all regards, including the case of each character and trailing spaces, which had been understandably overlooked by the users [2]. Users faced a choice of trying to re-order (and possibly hitting the limit of card uses without it being 'unlocked' on request) and losing their pre-order discount, or filling a support ticket with Valve and waiting. Valve posted an explanation and apology on the Steam forums [3] two days later, explaining that the increase in purchases made at the time had resulted in the reports of payment errors, and that proportionally the success and failure rates remained the same.
- SteamID reporting error
- From the closing months of 2005/6 to around March 2006, user SteamIDs were reported incorrectly when using the 'status' command to view them. Although the issue did not affect VAC, third-party tools and humans become confused and carried out their various actions on the wrong players. The error also provided a security hole to bypass Steam's authentication systems.
- This Steam Account Does Not Own This Game
- On October 1 2006, approximately 40% of active Steam users <ref name="oct1-graph">oct1-2006-downtimegraph.png</ref> (50 000 at the time) were consistently disconnected from online servers with an error stating that their account did not own the game in question. <ref name="doesnotowngameerror">Steam Account Does Not Own This Game. Steam User Forums (October 1 2006). Retrieved on 2006-10-02.</ref> Users discovered that deleting their cached login and connection information stored in the clientregistry.blob file resolved their issues, but only for a few minutes. The serverside issue was resolved at around 4:00AM GMT, after around ten hours. <ref name="accountnotownfixed">Reply to thread "Steam Account Does Not Own This Game". Steam User Forums (2 October 2006). Retrieved on 2006-10-02.</ref>
- Two hours after the issue was resolved Valve's official response was made, explaining that there had been an issue with one of the authentication servers. <ref name="doesnotowngame_response">"Disconnect: This Steam account does not own this game.". Steam User Forums (2 October 2006). Retrieved on 2006-10-03.
View Single Post - Steam Account Does Not Own This Game. Steam User Forums (2 October 2006). Retrieved on 2006-10-02.
View Single Post - Steam Account Does Not Own This Game. Steam User Forums (2 October 2006). Retrieved on 2006-10-03.</ref> Users still receiving the problem were asked to delete Steam's clientregistry.blob file and the cached connection information stored within it.
[edit] Security
Many hacks sprang up following Half-Life 2's launch, each claiming to be able to circumvent Steam and enable the user to get the games for free. Many were actually trojans, keyloggers, or viruses. Some were genuine, but Valve, realizing the advant complaints about hacks being used, released server-side fixes to prevent users who had not paid for the software from playing online and disabled accounts using them whenever possible. It is still possible to circumvent Steam's authentication process and download some of the games listed on Steam for free using various warez programs. A re-write of the client user ticket authentication system successfully stopped illegitimate users from playing any Steam games on online servers.
- On December 15 2005 Valve warned its customers that, having fixed the security holes that allowed several 'Steam hacks' to function, their creators had added code to steal legitimate account information instead [4]. They also warned of cheat distributors bundling keyloggers with their supposedly undetectable cheats.
- Servers can sometimes (the situation frequently changes) be modified to allow illegitimate and legitimate users to play alongside each other. These servers are able to use VAC and other anti-cheat tools to ban cheaters, but naturally the schemes are not effective in an environment where new identities can be created instantly and freely.
- When the Steam's authentication servers are off-line (for instance during maintenance) illegitimate users can play on legitimate servers.
[edit] Steam 3.0
The Steam 2.0 client was introduced for the platform's official release; Steam 3.0 is therefore the first major architectural upgrade undergone by the system's end-user software. While Valve have never explicitly stated their aims in regard to 3.0, they are believed by industry commentators to be based around the transition of Steam from something that 'just works' to a platform that customers and developers would positively want to use for more tangible reasons than profit margins and independence.<ref name="steam-vs-wow" /> This view is supported by the list of known Steam 3.0 technologies:
- Valve Anti-Cheat 2
- Beta began May 6, 2005[citation needed], final release date unknown
- See Valve Anti-Cheat
- User Interface 3.0
- Designed to accommodate a larger catalogue<ref name="ui3-announce">Steam to receive ‘visual overhaul’. The Steam Review (September 29 2005). Retrieved on 2006-11-29.</ref>
- Supoprted à la carte purchasing
- Provided room for future expansion
- Released on October 11, 2005<ref name="ui3-release">Steam Client Update Released. Steam News (October 11 2005). Retrieved on 2006-11-29.</ref> after a six-day public beta.
- Friends 3.0
- Based on new UDP connection technology for reliability<ref name="friends3-tsr-interview">Friends 3.0 Pre-beta Interview. The Steam Review (January 1 2006). Retrieved on 2006-11-29.</ref>
- Allows future expansion
- Will be used to offer 'Guest Passes'<ref name="guest-passes">Guest Passes resurface. The Steam Review (October 27 2006). Retrieved on 2006-11-29.</ref>
- Beta opened January 31, 2006, refreshed on March 13, 2006<ref name="friends3-betadates">Friends Beta. Valve Developer Community (January 31 2006). Retrieved on 2006-11-29.</ref>
- Officially released May 31 2006, ahead of Half-Life 2: Episode One.<ref name="friends3-release">Steam client update released. Steam Update News (May 31 2006). Retrieved on 2006-11-29.</ref>
- Peer-to-Peer distribution<ref name="p2p-in-dev">Peer-to-Peer downloads in development. The Steam Review (March 16 2006). Retrieved on 2006-11-29.</ref>
- Will allow mod distribution
- May also be leveraged for free content in general
Versions (although the term is somewhat of a misnomer) 2.0 and 3.0 of Steam are operated simultaneously as functions are migrated. Version 2.0 is contained within steam.dll, while the parts of 3.0 in use can be found in steamclient.dll.
[edit] Products
- See Category:Steam products for a list of all products.
[edit] Recent Releases
- Garry's Mod
- Heroes of Annihilated Empires
- Medieval II: Total War (North/South America only)
- Prey
- RACE - The Official WTCC Game
[edit] Future
- Valve games
- Half-Life 2: Episode Two and Three,
- Portal
- Team Fortress 2
- Other developers
- Alien Swarm: Infested
- Left 4 Dead
- Natural Selection 2
- Pirates of the Burning Sea
- SiN Episodes series
- Zen of Sudoku [5]
- Unnamed game developed by Laid Back Gaming, inspired by X-Com
- Unnamed series of free, episodic, advert-driven games developed by Threewave Software <ref name="threewaveadepisodes">First-Person Advertiser - Talking In-Game Ads With Threewave Software. Gamasutra. Retrieved on 2006-09-16.</ref>
[edit] Ongoing publisher contracts
- Strategy First <ref name="sf-deal">Strategy First to Deliver Multiple Titles On-Line via Steam. Strategy First PR Department (8 December 2005). Retrieved on 2006-08-23.</ref>
- Atari (GamersFirst budget range, not yet available) <ref name="atari-deal">Atari’s back catalogue on Steam by June?. The Steam Review (14 May 2006). Retrieved on 2006-09-18.</ref>
- PopCap Games <ref name="popcap-deal">PopCap Games Coming To Steam. Steam News (22 August 2006). Retrieved on 2006-08-23.</ref>
- Majesco Entertainment <ref name="majesco-deal">Majesco Entertainment And Valve Announce Steam Digital Distribution Agreement. Majesco/Valve PR Departments (15 September 2006). Retrieved on 2006-09-18.</ref>
- 2K Games <ref name="2k-deal">2K building up Steam. Gamespot UK News (24 October 2006). Retrieved on 2006-10-25.</ref>
[edit] See also
- SteamID
- Category:Steam products
- List of Half-Life mods
- Valve Corporation
- Valve Anti-Cheat
- Digital distribution
- GameShadow
- EA Link
[edit] References
<references />
[edit] External links
- Official
- Steam website - official Steam website
- Valve Software - Valve's official website
- Valve Developer Community/Steam - Steam category on the official VDC Wiki
- Community
- Steam Users Forums - official discussion forums
- The Steam Review - Analytical comment and discussion on Steam
- The Steam Podcast - Weekly chat about recent Steam news, gaming and hardware news, and interviews with people in the industry
- How to run Steam in Linux using Cedega (formerly WineX)
- GCFScape: Tool for viewing and extracting Steam's GCF format
- Other
- Vapour: Community-built mod download service supporting various games and mods
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