Before the launch of Steam 1.0, Valve devised a digital distribution system that would have forced users to download additional files every single time they launched a game. The anti-piracy solution collapsed during its first major test and provoked such intense criticism that the company abandoned the entire idea within hours.
It is no exaggeration to say that Steam has become the undisputed queen of PC gaming. Its catalog contains thousands of games for every possible taste, along with countless social features, and this combination has attracted millions of users from around the world. There was a time, however, when Valve nearly jeopardized the entire initiative with an idea that quickly became a target of criticism among PC players. Fortunately, the strategy ultimately became little more than a footnote in the platform’s history, because it could have fundamentally changed the way digital games were enjoyed.
On September 12, 2003, Valve launched Steam 1.0, beginning a business model that would eventually establish its PC store as one of the most important forces in gaming. Before this major release, and with no existing example to imitate, the developers conducted numerous experiments to explore the possibilities and limits of their digital distribution system. That process was not without serious mistakes, and one of the most notable was the Steam Broadband Delivery System 2.0. As the editors of GameStar recall, this proposal sparked one of the biggest controversies in the platform’s early history.
An Additional Download Every Time a Game Was Launched
Steam’s current game distribution system is relatively straightforward: users purchase a license for a title, a detail that is now clearly highlighted during the transaction, download the necessary files, and start playing. Several months before the release of version 1.0 of its PC application, however, Valve had a completely different idea for providing access to digital games. Under this system, users would initially download only a basic and incomplete version of each title.
Whenever a player launched a game through the Steam client, the system would automatically begin downloading all the remaining files required for the experience, and completing this process would have been absolutely necessary before the purchased product could be played. The worst part would have come afterward: once the game was closed, the computer would automatically delete the files that had just been downloaded. Valve effectively wanted players to download part of their games again every single time they wished to continue playing.
What was the logic behind such a procedure? Valve’s proposal was a rather clumsy attempt to combat piracy, since players would never have access to all of a game’s content on their computers at the same time, theoretically limiting the illegal distribution of its files. The entire system was abandoned within hours, however, because the problematic testing process almost immediately generated criticism and widespread dissatisfaction among members of the Steam community.
The Counter-Strike 1.6 Test Became a Complete Disaster
On January 16, 2003, Valve conducted a beta test to evaluate the effectiveness of its new video game distribution strategy. The company selected a title that was then at the height of its popularity: Counter-Strike 1.6. The test was not carried out under anything resembling optimal conditions, as a massive system crash ultimately became a turning point for the future of the Steam platform.
The GameStar writers experienced the entire event firsthand and reported that the problem unfolded over the course of approximately fifteen minutes. Users could not log into Counter-Strike 1.6, digital queues stretched to extraordinary lengths, dozens of complaints flooded in, and the beta quickly became an absolute disaster. At the time, Steam provided only a 500 Mbit server, a woefully inadequate amount of capacity to support such a massive download system even by the standards of the internet in 2003.
To make matters worse, the community began to suspect that Steam would eventually charge users for every download of the files required to run their games. The idea was being tested during a period when reliable and fast internet access was far from universal, and when this limitation was combined with the terrible first impressions created by the beta, the community erupted in complaints against Valve’s initiative.
Fortunately, all of this is now little more than a bad memory. The community understood perfectly well that if Valve had approved the plan, this distribution system could have become a genuine nightmare for countless players. GameStar concluded its 2003 article with a similar observation: “I was actually glad things went terribly wrong, because this will save us from the crazy distribution system for a while. […] What if the download has just finished and the computer crashes? Then the whole download starts all over again.” Whatever the circumstances, the creators of Steam made the correct decision by abandoning the procedure, and the PC platform has since achieved unprecedented popularity.
Source: 3DJuegos
