What is steam in the game? Key features of STEAM

Steam is a service that is primarily useful to people who are interested in computer games. What does Steam give us? Using it, you can activate your new toy, download its components via the Internet, download updates and news about the game.

Steam is the brainchild of Valve. Accordingly, Steam works with Valve products and products of those developers who have signed a contract with Valve.

In addition, through Steam, without leaving home and without being distracted from your computer, you can buy new games from Valve and other developers.

Who works with the Steam service?

• Activision;
• Codemasters;
• Eidos Interactive;
• EA Games;
• Epic Games;
• GSC Game World;
• id Software;
• Sega;
• Atari;
• Rockstar Games;
• UbiSoft;
• NCSoft;
• and many others.

According to statistics for October 2010, up to 3 thousand products are sold through Steam, and the number of registered users reaches 30 million. The main products of Steam are computer games, trailers and modifications for games.

The word Steam itself means “steam” in English.

It is impossible to overestimate the impact of the emerging service on modern market computer games. The most serious development was found by developers of independent games. Previously, large publishing houses were very wary of new non-standard games, since it was not known in advance how profitable these developments would be. Now the situation has changed. Indie games are distributed through Steam, which gives a start-up team of programmers a chance to get into serious business in the field of computer entertainment.

Steam is a new word in the sales of computer games via the Internet. The method by which Steam operates is called digital distribution. If a publisher uses this method, it significantly reduces its costs on a number of items. There is no need to spend money on producing discs, packaging, printing covers or transporting them. Now everything is possible via the Internet. Accordingly, the financial risk of independent games is reduced several times. In addition, if an independent game finds particular popularity among Steam users, then the developers will have the opportunity to get a contract with a major publisher.

There is no doubt that digital distribution is a step into the future. These technologies are used not only in the field of computer games, but also in the music business. The time is coming not for material values, but for ideas that bring material profit.

“You can break a sword, but you cannot destroy an idea.” (Victor Hugo)

You can often hear the question of what Steam is and how to use it. Steam is the best this moment, a service for online purchasing of computer games. Here you can find hundreds of different games for Windows and MacOS operating systems. In this article we will look at the main features that Steam provides to users.

The Steam service has four main parts, these are: Store, Library, News and Community. We will now look at each of these parts in more detail.

Shop this is a catalog of games where you can choose and buy the game you like. After the game is purchased, it moves to the Library section and begins downloading; after the download is complete, you can play.

Library This is a catalog of games you have purchased. Having purchased a game once, it remains in your Library forever, and you can always download it using Steam and start playing. This way, all your games are centralized and cataloged in one place.

News not a particularly interesting section. News about the Steam system, new games and updates are published here.

Community is a social network for gamers. Here you can chat with Steam users you have added as friends. The community provides many opportunities for organizing joint leisure time playing computer games.

Key features of STEAM

• Purchasing games. If you don't know what Steam is, it's best to start by purchasing games. There are a large number of games available in the Steam catalog. And most of these games can be purchased from anywhere in the world. All you need is Internet access to top up your Steam account and download the game after purchase. By purchasing at least one game, you will quickly understand all the capabilities of this system. You can top up your Steam account using Webmoney, MasterCard, American Express, Visa, PayPal, as well as other payment services. Replenishment occurs quickly and without problems.
• Free games. Steam users are given access to a large number free games.
• Convenient client. You can also work with Steam using a browser. To quickly get acquainted with what Steam is, go to . But, in order to gain access to all the features of Steam you need. The client is an application with which you can top up your account, buy games, communicate with other players and much more.
If a game you purchased from a physical store is also sold on Steam, you can add it to your Game Library. To do this, just enter the key to the game. After this, this game will become available in your Steam account, and you can download it any time you need it.
• Saving game settings to the Steam Cloud online storage. By saving your settings online, you don’t have to worry about their safety.
• Creating offline backups of games. If you have a slow Internet connection and downloading games is difficult for you, you can create a backup copy of the game you purchased on Steam and burn it to a disc or other

Steam - service to pump money out of your wallets digital distribution of licensed video games, programs and films; TV series and music may also appear in the future.

The developer and owner of the service is the world-famous company Valve, the developer of such popular games as Counter-Strike, Dota 2, Half-Life, Portal, Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress and others.

A little history

The Steam service began its history in 1999, but it officially appeared in 2002 and then it was not yet a platform for sales and was simply an unnecessary component for games.

Around the same time, Valve came up with the idea of ​​selling digital content through its service. At the time, such an idea was very expensive to implement, so the company decided to partner with Amazon, Yahoo or Cisco to help solve the problem. Negotiations between them led nowhere, and Valve begins to bring the idea to life on its own.

So already in 2003, sales of digital goods began in the Steam store, and in 2004, with the release of the game Half-Life 2, the presence of a Steam client became mandatory.

Another year later, games from other developers began to appear intensively on Steam.

The service is developing, new functions are appearing, the design is changing several times and, having gone quite a long way, it becomes what we see it today.

You can learn more about the history of the service by following the links:

• Steam History: Wikipedia
• Steam History: Steam User Content

What is Steam?

If I were asked to briefly and clearly give a person an answer to the question “what is Steam?”, then I would say something like the following:

Steam This is a service that provides access to thousands of licensed products, mainly games. Here you can buy the game for real money and immediately download the licensed version to your computer.

All purchased games will be linked to your account and you will be able to access them at any time, years later, even from another country. Even if the game is deleted from the service for some reason, you will still be able to download it and play it if you purchased it before deletion.

In addition to paid products, there are many free ones, some of which are really high quality and worth your attention.

In addition, Steam has a social part, that is, you can add other users as friends, share achievements, screenshots, videos from games, etc. with them.

What is Steam for?

I decided to answer this question by listing all the positive aspects of this project:

• A huge catalog of games with easy search and navigation makes it easy to find and purchase games. Your collection will always be with you, even when you have to reinstall operating system or even change your computer. A couple of clicks and the library will be restored. It's convenient.
• Steam is famous for its spontaneous sales and promotions, and the discounts themselves have become business card. Although we are not talking about new products, old games that were released a year or more ago can definitely be obtained at a good discount, up to 90%. The biggest sales are the Summer Sale and the Winter Sale. There are also less global sales, such as Autumn sales, or dedicated to some holiday, such as Halloween. There are also mini-sales - all games from one developer or publisher receive discounts. And that is not all. Every week, several games also get good discounts and "free weekends", meaning you can play the game for free over the weekend.
• Steam has long been not only trading platform, but also some semblance social network. Convenient communication with friends, social services (comments, likes, etc.) and many network games, which were developed thanks to Steam.
• Don't forget about other useful services. For example, Steam Family Sharing allows you to share games with your family or friends. There is also Steam Cloud, which makes it possible to store settings and saves from games on Valve servers. This means that even if you lose all the data from hard drive you can continue playing thanks to cloud storage of your saves.
• If a game or other product turns out to be bad or you simply don’t like it, you can cancel the purchase, thereby getting your money back. But it is worth noting that the game can be returned only when you have played it for no more than two hours. This opportunity encourages developers to release the highest quality product possible, and guarantees that the service will work fairly.


• Steam provides the opportunity to receive money to its users. Ordinary players definitely won’t be able to earn much, but you can earn $10 a month (if you work from several accounts) by selling game cards, things, emoticons, backgrounds, etc. But designers have room to expand, as they can create their own models of items for the workshop.
• Steam has become a real paradise for indie developers. After all, in the vastness of the entire Internet, it’s easy to get worn out small project, but Steam is easily capable of raising a worthwhile product to the top.
• As mentioned above, Steam has many online games that can be played by people all over the world. However, there are users who play with cheats and other auxiliary programs. An anti-cheat was developed especially for such games and players, which is not flawless; the most “rage” cheats are able to detect and prohibit the player from playing this game on this account for life. In addition, Valve is preparing a neural network that should learn to detect foul play on its own.

Before you figure out how to use Steam, it’s worth explaining what the program is and why it is needed. Steam is a well-known and largest digital store for games and updates for them on the Internet. The name translated into Russian sounds like “valve”. Users simply call it “Steam” among themselves. Using Steam, you can purchase more than three thousand products on this topic and more. At the moment, Steam has more than 63 million users, which is an undoubted record for such a resource. The owner and creator of the store is the famous company Valve Software.

Steam Features

• free use of already purchased and activated games,
• automatic free game updates. Updates are installed automatically upon release,
• gaming world news,
• informing about new products,
• search for games and servers for them by various criteria and filters,
• purchasing a game for another person as a gift at your own expense,
• various communities of interests,
• chat between users.

How to install the program and how to use it to activate games and use the full variety of resource capabilities? Let's look at the step-by-step instructions.

Installing "Steam" and creating an account

• To install Steam, you need an Internet connection. It is best to download the program from the official website.
• During installation, the program will ask for a login and password. If this is your first time installing Steam, you will need to go through a formal registration process. To do this, you need to fill in the following fields: “Account name” - your unique name (login) in the Steam system, “Password” - your password, respectively. In the next field, you will need to re-enter the specified password. Next, press the “Next” key
• If the login you created already exists in the system, you will be given the opportunity to change it to a new one.
• Next, enter the active address in both fields Email and select a secret question that may be needed in the future to recover your password. Answer the question and press the “Next” button.
• The system will display a message on the screen indicating that registration is complete. Click “Finish”

Entrance

When you first log in, enter your login in the “Login” field and enter your password in the “Password” field. Next, press the “Remember my password” button for convenience. Next time, you will be logged into your account automatically. And this will allow you to run games without connecting to the Internet, which is very convenient if the connection suddenly disappears, but you want to play. Press the “Login” button.

Game activation

Registered, logged in, looked around and now key question how to activate games? How to use Steam? To activate the game, you must complete the following steps:

• Open the program menu item called “Play Games”
• In this window, click on the name of the game
• If your copy of the game has not yet been activated, Steam will automatically offer you to buy it.
• Click on “Register a product I already own”
• Next you need to enter your individual registration number copies of the purchased game and press the “Next” button.
• After checking the number and downloading updates, the program will complete activation

Payment for purchases

Payment in the Steam store is carried out in the following ways:

• credit cards Visa, Mastercard, AMEX, Discover, JCB
• debit cards Visa, Mastercard
• PayPal
• Webmoney
• ClickandBuy
• Yandex money
• Xsolla
• QIWI Wallet
• And others less common (depending on the region).

• An important point to remember in the context of how to use Steam is that it is not possible for two users to play from the same account.
• If, when loading an activated game, the speed is lower than what your connection can provide, you need to go to “Settings” - “Download” and change the download server in the context menu.
• look for game secrets in various thematic communities.
• Be sure to wait for the games to load 100% and do not allow the Internet connection to be interrupted, otherwise the entire activation procedure will need to be started again.