Steam Turns 18 YO Today - Rolled Out: Sept. 12 2003

Zarathustra[H] said:
I never understood why people stuck with 1.6 for so long. I moved my servers to Source as soon as it launched and never looked back. I thought it was a great update.

I'm guessing there were just too many who were playing on really shitty low end machines.

I remember at about that time when I switched the servers over to source some people were complaining of "lag" (presumably because they had no idea what frame rate was). I encouraged them to upgrade their GPU's. They must have been on some shitty GeForce 2 MX cards or something.
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I loved source too. As far as I recall, competitive players stuck to 1.6 for it's "better" gun mechanics (that require a bit more effort for mastery, supposedly) and "better" hitboxes. That created a bit of a stigma against CSS.

I still fire up source to this day to hit some surf servers, 1.6 has been sitting dormant for ages...
 
I am 17 as well.
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I got Steam after I got this card,
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I paid the extra $10 for the Silver Package,
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Zarathustra[H] said:
I never understood why people stuck with 1.6 for so long. I moved my servers to Source as soon as it launched and never looked back. I thought it was a great update.

I'm guessing there were just too many who were playing on really shitty low end machines.

I remember at about that time when I switched the servers over to source some people were complaining of "lag" (presumably because they had no idea what frame rate was). I encouraged them to upgrade their GPU's. They must have been on some shitty GeForce 2 MX cards or something.
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LAWL, I was totally one of those Source n00bs with a Geforce 2 MX! Such fun times nonetheless!
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I only held out because I didn't think Steam would last lol.. and it was cheaper to pirate games because cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, rent, food, and hobbies were not cheap.

Lol they still aren't, but I gave up a bunch of things when we had kids. Kept some bad habits but not all, and I only have a drink at Christmas :D

I bought Orange Box at Wal-Mart when the game was new.. thinking I wouldn't have to install Steam.. I was pissed when I saw Steam installing lol :D

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Zarathustra[H] said:
I'm trying to remember what the deal was with Condition Zero.

I was pretty much a Counter-strike addict back then but I went straight from the Counter-strike mod to Counter-Strike: Source.

I can't even remember what Condition Zero was, or if I ever played it. I think I have it in my library though. It must have come bundled with something....
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I forgot if it was a standalone expansion or you needed to own regular CS for it but it had a primitive SP campaign, maybe some new weapons. But it had improved graphics and I think physics too and improved levels. I had it and really liked it but it wasn't backwards compatible and since almost no one bought it so the online aspect of it wasn't very active. Very few servers with players in them even in its hayday. Lots and lots of dead servers.

It felt like a more polished/updated version of 1.6 that didn't mess with the formula that made 1.6 good. It just cost money for not much content. Should have made it CS 1.7 and released it as a free update IMO.
 
Day 2 for me as well on my original account, my actual one ive been using is nov 16, 2004 think i bought the account back in the day because it had other games already on it
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Mojo3k70 said:
Beat by a couple of days :LOL:

Funny how everyone around me, including myself, absolutely despised steam around release. Oh how far we've come.View attachment 394996
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I recall being a little bit apprehensive at first, but I was by no means one of the people who were dead set against digital distribution. I saw the many benefits to it as well.

Before steam I actually pirated some things. Steam put an end to that. It made buying games easy and in many cases (with sales) affordable. I didn't feel the need or desire to pirate anymore.

These days the temptation to pirate shit is back though. Single player games bought through Steam that require you to install their launcher/store and/or create an online account? Yeah, that's an instant refund and possible pirate download.

I'm willing to pay for games but I'm not willing to put up with that abusive bullshit, and I'm happy to rob the developer and/or publisher of their payday because of it. You try to screw me over, I'll return the favor.
 
There was something nice about the old days when PC games came boxed in the store. And the PC boxes were always way cooler.

But digital was obviously the future and I'm glad Valve was the one with success here and not some scummy company like EA.

And I'll admit I used to pirate back when I was a broke teenager, but I make decent money these days, I can afford to support artists and creators that are making cool stuff.
 
Zepher said:
I am 17 as well.
I got Steam after I got this card,
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I paid the extra $10 for the Silver Package,
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I miss the simple and de-bloated Steam of olden days :joyful:
ps graphic cards always had the cheesiest and most "stock image" type of graphics on the boxes, aside from 3dfxs in-house Voodoo faces which were pretty bad ass! Like wtf is that graphic supposed to represent to us gamers? They were quite lame, but somehow still attracted attention, lol.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I'm trying to remember what the deal was with Condition Zero.

I was pretty much a Counter-strike addict back then but I went straight from the Counter-strike mod to Counter-Strike: Source.

I can't even remember what Condition Zero was, or if I ever played it. I think I have it in my library though. It must have come bundled with something....
Click to expand...
The bots and single player campaign were the selling point for CZ. Turtle Rock made the bots, Ritual and Gearbox made the two SP campaigns. I personally thought that the overall game felt better than 1.5 and would have preferred playing multiplayer there, but it was never that populated. Some of the new maps were really good. Being a retail product competing with the free mod was never going to grow the population, though. It was a standalone product. You didn't need to own any of the Half-Life retail games to play it.
 
Not legal just yet…but soon. I remember the server I played on didn't like 1.6 and stuck with 1.5. If I remember correctly? Steam didn't support 1.5 out the gate as they were really pushing 1.6 at the time. It wouldn't be until later that they finally allowed 1.5 servers.


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Created my account two days after HL2 launched. Thankfully my school did not block Steam on the network so I was able to install and play it. I doubt they were even aware of it at the time since it was such a new thing.

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sharknice said:
It was somewhere around version CS 1.3 where Steam became a requirement for Counter-Strike. There were a lot of people that refused to use Steam and continued to play the old versions.

CS and Half-Life 2 requiring it got a lot of people using Steam.

No one wanted to use Steam before that because it was inconvenient and kind of just sucked. Instead of simply clicking an icon and launching your games, you had to open up steam and then launch your game. Instead of simply joining a server from within Counter-Strike you had to go to do it through the Steam interface.
It was buggy. It would tab you out when there were notifications and mess up your game.
You were forced to download steam updates then download game updates. Which was a big problem back then because internet speeds were slower and a lot of people were still on dial-up. If you bought a game on Steam the download time was an actual problem for people.
It didn't have nearly as many features as it does now and the features it did have sucked and were done better by other programs.

I didn't know anyone that actually liked Steam when it was new. They used it because it was the only way to play the games they wanted to.
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I still haven't played half-life 2 because of that.

Yes, I can hold my grudges for a long, long time.
 
My current account is 14 years old, however it's named "Syl2" and I recall having a previous one that I got around the time HL2 launched. I don't remember why I stopped using it, but I think I got hacked or something equally dumb because, back then, I was dumb.
 
First account was created on release day for HL2, but was hijacked sometime after 3 or 4 years, so I made a new account and never bothered to get the first one recovered. My current account I believe is either 12 or 13 years.
 
My friend made me install it for Counter Strike Source if I recall correctly. I have always used the maximum password length allowed and all character types allowed since then, so far no breaches. Hopefully that luck holds. I change the password every 45-60 days.
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When STEAM came I was really skeptical of a cloud gaming service storing my games, same with the idea of streaming television. I think it came from not trusting my Internet to always be on and being reliable enough so I can play games and watch TV whenever I wanted to. But here we are and I think my FIOS connection gave me confidence in a reliable Internet. Back before I quit gaming early last year I was done with physical media (game discs, blu-ray, DVDs) taking up my space in book shelves.
 
10 years, 13 of April 2011 joined. I was quite late to the Steam party even though I was fully aware what Steam was when it came bundled with HL2. Or more accurately thought it was, just another pesky copy protection in my back-then teenage pirate eyes and a nuisance only good for to be cracked away. I think of was Total War - Shogun 2 that finally pushed me over the edge and make me an account. Funny how it goes, I tried my hardest to avoid Steam but now it is pretty much the only store I put my money in, together with GOG that is.
 
MajorMullet said:
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I remember HL2 coming with a video card at the time. ATI 9600XT I think? I thought I installed Steam because of that bundle but I see my account was created in March 2004 but my ATI Bundle receipt is dated 11/9/2004. No idea why but somehow I still have the confirmation from the ATI Bundle redemption. Guess I'm too old to remember the real reason :)
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Maybe by the time you bought the bundle in March,, they had decided upon the release date?

I'm sure cards with the tickets sold in 2003 holiday season had no such post-date :D
 
sharknice said:
It was somewhere around version CS 1.3 where Steam became a requirement for Counter-Strike. There were a lot of people that refused to use Steam and continued to play the old versions.

CS and Half-Life 2 requiring it got a lot of people using Steam.

No one wanted to use Steam before that because it was inconvenient and kind of just sucked. Instead of simply clicking an icon and launching your games, you had to open up steam and then launch your game. Instead of simply joining a server from within Counter-Strike you had to go to do it through the Steam interface.
It was buggy. It would tab you out when there were notifications and mess up your game.
You were forced to download steam updates then download game updates. Which was a big problem back then because internet speeds were slower and a lot of people were still on dial-up. If you bought a game on Steam the download time was an actual problem for people.
It didn't have nearly as many features as it does now and the features it did have sucked and were done better by other programs.

I didn't know anyone that actually liked Steam when it was new. They used it because it was the only way to play the games they wanted to.
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It took an entire week for me to get HL2 installed and verified on a 56K modem. I was pretty salty about it at first, but that melted away when I was finally able to start playing the game. The connection speed combined with the server load just made that experience completely miserable.
 
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