It goes without saying that Valve Software's Steam platform is one of the saving graces of the PC gaming market. I mean, let's say you don't own an Xbox 360 or PS3 at all. You can wake up at 2AM, buy a brand new copy of The Orange Box, and be playing it in super hi-resolution before your "wake-up" cup of coffee is done brewing. Apparently, not only did some companies pass on offering epic games like Portal over their service; but some even had the chance to help Valve create the ground-breaking service - and passed. Valve's marketing VP Doug Lombardi told GamesIndustry that in the early days:

You know, we went around to Yahoo, Microsoft...and anybody who seemed like a likely candidate to build something like Steam. 

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 asked 'Are you guys doing anything like this?' And everyone was like 'That's a million miles in the future...We can't help you.

Oh ho. Damn. I wonder how sore some Yahoo exec's. asses were after the long, drawn out kicking sessions? At least Microsoft got the gist of things and created something similar that we all love too, no?

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (1)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

PitifulBean said:

I was looking for Left 4 Dead info this morning and to see the HD trailer, I had to download Steam. Let me tell you, this is something I can totally get into (Steam that is). I'm a 360 gamer; however, PC games look pretty sweet and Steam looks like an awesome media.

May 01, 2008