Shopping on line can be easy, simple and save you lots of money. It can also take a lot of your time, frustrate you, and result in unwanted purchases. Now the same can be said for regular high street shopping, but with the vast opportunity presented by the Internet it will pay you to spend a few minutes reading this and understanding how to better optimize your Steam Content Delivery shopping experience:

1. Compare - without doubt the biggest advantage that the Steam Content Delivery offers shoppers today is the ability to compare thousands of Steam Content Delivery at a time. This is a great thing, but not necessarily all the time! Too much can be daunting at times so take advantage of the great comparison sites and where possible let them do the hard work for you.

2. Research - if it has been said it will be on the internet. Ignorance is no longer a justifiable reason for buying the wrong thing. Take the time to research in detail everything that you could possible want to know about

3. Testimonials - don't know anybody that has bought a Steam Content Delivery ? Wrong! If the Steam Content Delivery is good the internet will let you know. Use the Internet as a friend and get testimonials before you buy.

4. Questions - Got a question about Steam Content Delivery then search the Forums, FAQ's, Blogs etc. Don't be afraid to ask .....

5. Reputation - Never heard of the company selling Steam Content Delivery ? Don't worry, no reason why you should know every company in the world, but you know someone that does! Use the internet to find out what people are saying about Steam Content Delivery and build up a picture of their reputation for sales, returns, customer service, delivery etc.

6. Returns - still worried that even after all of the above your Steam Content Delivery wont be what you want? Check out the returns policy. There is so much competition now that someone, somewhere is bound to offer the terms that you are comfortable with.

7. Feedback - happy with your Steam Content Delivery then let people know, after all you are depending on others people input in your buying decision, so why not give a little back.

8. Security - check for the yellow padlock on the Steam Content Delivery site before you buy, and the s after http:/ /i.e. https:// = a secure site

9. Contact - got a question about Steam Content Delivery , or want to leave a comment then check out the sites contact page. Reputable companies have them and respond.

10. Payment - ready to pay for your Steam Content Delivery , then use your credit card or PayPal! Be aware of companies that don't accept them, there may be genuine reasons but given the huge amount of choice you have when buying online there is no reason at all not to buy via credit card or PayPal.

{{Infobox_Software2|name = Steam |logo = |screenshot = |caption = The Steam welcome screen|developer = Valve Corporation|language = [#Localization (18)|genre = Content delivery|website = www.steampowered.com-->

Steam is a [digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer and communications platform developed by Valve Corporation. It is used to digitally distribute and manage games ranging from first-person shooters and Role-Playing Games to racing games and cross-genre independent titles. Among its clients are Take-Two Interactive, Eidos Interactive, Introversion Software, Strategy First, PopCap Games, Capcom, id Software and most recently, THQ.

As of September 2, 2007 over :Category:Steam products are available on Steam, and there are approximately 13 million active users.

Client functionality Purchases Steam allows users to purchase access to games through a digital distribution system. Instead of receiving a box, disc, or even CD key, purchased software is immediately attached on the Steam servers to the user’s Steam account (which is registered for free), from which it can be accessed and downloaded from anywhere that allows the use of the Steam client. Games can either be bought individually (with some exceptions) or as part of a “package” of multiple games, if one is available, which will provide better value for money.



All purchases are made from the Desktop environment through the Steam client, with an Cryptographic protocol, and users are required to enter their billing details from scratch for each purchase as Steam does not store them between transactions. Only electronic payment is accepted:



The Maestro (debit card) debit cards popular in Europe are not supported directly, but can be used in Paypal payments.

Price points Disregarding discounts and package offers, most Steam games are priced at one of the following pre-tax levels:



Steam receives criticism for the prices of games brought into its library through publisher contracts, which are almost all priced at US$49.95 or, more recently, US$39.95. In these cases Steam is frequently undercut to a large degree by physical retailers, sometimes from the moment they are made available through it. While Valve have never stated a reason for the high prices, it is worth bearing in mind Scott Miller (programmer)'s explanation of why prices for retailing games were also at US$49.95 on the Triton (content delivery) delivery service:

-->

Prices on Steam drop over time, but at a rate far slower than that of retail reductions.

Prices sometimes differ in different territories; for instance, Prey (Computer Game) was available in America for US$19.95 but was US$49.95 everywhere else., while Bioshock has a listed price of US$49.95 for some areas, such as the United States, while it is US$54.95 in other areas, such as Europe. Some regions benefit from cheaper games on Steam than in retail because Steam is based on the US dollar. Australian recommended retail price for Bioshock is $89.95 AUD ($78 USD), while the game costs only $49.95 USD on Steam.

Local VAT rates apply.

System limitations There are several limitations to the current billing system:



Downloads Instead of requiring users to seek out and download the content they want, Steam works, at a high level, in a manner analogous to a feed reader: The user selects the game they want on their computer and Steam then automates the process of downloading the content and keeping it up to date. The latest version of the game is immediately downloaded, and if there are multiple versions (e.g. a 64-bit edition) the correct one will be chosen automatically based on the computer’s hardware and/or software environment. This process happens every time Steam is started online, not just when a game is installed, ensuring that as many users as possible have the latest software.

Steam connects over its own internet Protocol (computing), independent of the HTTP or FTP protocols used by the web. It downloads only from dedicated “content servers” spread out across the world by Valve and authorised third parties, (click “View individual server statistics”) connecting to several at once to try to ensure a fast and stable connection. A common error in this process is the “content servers too busy” message – which is most likely to mean that the cached “clientregistry.blob” connection information has become corrupt, rather than its literal interpretation. Content is compressed during a download, to a currently uncertain ratio, but unpacked for local storage as it arrives.

Steam can validate its downloaded content for errors, a process that gives many of the benefits of reinstalling in a fraction of the time.

Content streaming Steam has a “Distributed File System” that allows a game to launch before it has been completely downloaded. By creating lists of files and requesting them only when about to be needed, a linear game can be begun with only the executable code and a buffer of the first few areas downloaded. In the worst-case scenario, the game will hang while Steam downloads in the background (ideally a progress bar would be displayed).

Steam’s “preloader” travels top-to-bottom through a defined list of files, whether the game is running or not, unless interrupted. The onus is almost entirely on the game developer to manage the system however, and nobody has yet developed any system that takes advantage of it beyond its built-in behaviour. In fact with a handful of exceptions only Valve’s old GoldSrc games use content streaming at all; as a result, and thanks to their age, they can be launched within seconds of their download starting on modern internet connections.

Game Cache Files Steam-integrated games download to non-compressed archive files with the extension .gcf, standing for Game Cache File, which can be found in the /SteamApps folder. The GCF format is a similar idea to the various archive formats used by other developers, such as PAK (file format) files, and has the following effects:



Games that do not fully integrate with Steam use the “No Cache File” .ncf format, which is merely an index of files pointing to a standard operating system folder in the /common subfolder.

Valve have not released a tool that allows the unrestricted browsing of GCF files, although development tools for their games can browse for files relevant to them. Third-party tool GCFScape is widely used by Valve’s mod (computer gaming) community to view and extract general data.

Social Networking

On June 20, 2007, Valve announced a major update "The Steam Community", which would allow users to setup their own personal pages on Steam, along with many other social networking tools. Valve also believes that this will be the biggest update to Steam since its initial release. This update was released as a beta on August 6, 2007 and was officially released on September 12, 2007. Users are required to make a profile, called a SteamID, which will then be attached to your Steam User account. The SteamID page of each user contains info such as the users friends, how long they have played each game for in the past two weeks, their Steam Rating, which is a rating out of 10 according to how long they have played games for, and which groups they are in.http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Steam_rating

A major new feature in the Steam Community update is the new Steam Overlay. This is a layer put on the screen, whenever the user presses a defined hot key (customizable by the user) at the same time, has buttons to change Settings, view the players in your current server (For Source and GoldSrc games only) and view your Steam Friends list. This overlay works in any Steam game, not just Source and GoldSrc games. The overlay also functions in some non-Steam games that have been added to your Steam games list..

Friends

Friends is Steam’s instant messaging service. Version 3.0 of the system was released on 31 May 2006, after several years of the broken and unmaintained version 2.0. Friends allows users of Steam accounts to enter one-to-one conversations; its defining features are its ability to be used both from the desktop and natively from games that support it, and its display of the game a user is running along with the ability to quickly join any multiplayer server he or she is connected to.

Friends is a popular attack vector for phishers trying to hijack users’ Steam accounts, as it is a semi-official channel and can be accessed without buying any games. Valve have attempted to combat this by adding phishing warning messages at the start of each conversation and banning the use of certain words (such as “valve” and “steam”) from display names.

On September 12, 2007, friends was updated with the Steam Community update. It now shows the users avatar by each users name, it allows Voice chat to be used as well as text, it changes the color of the users name depending on if they are Ingame/Online/etc, you can now make multi-user chats, and it now shows when users come online/send you a message/play a game, with a small fading rectangle in the bottom right corner of the screen.

Server Browser Steam’s server browser allows users to search, filter, bookmark and join internet and Local Area Network games for the titles that integrate with it. It works from the desktop and from a game's menu, and integrates with Friends to show a centralised list of servers to which contacts are connected.

Valve Anti-Cheat Valve's proprietary anti-cheat solution incorporated into Steam. See Valve Anti-Cheat.

Promotions Alongside standard pop-up “Update News” adverts and price discounts, Steam provides Guest Pass, Free Weekend and Hardware promotions, all of which unique to it:

Guest Passes

Guest passes are a similar concept to that of spawned installation of games. Each pass allows the owner of the associated multiplayer game to hand out unrestricted but time-limited access by entering the Steam account name or e-mail address of a friend. The system is designed to replace standard multiplayer demos that inevitably crowd users into demo servers where they are either picked on by experienced players or unable to play with the full version’s player base.

Guest Passes are made generally available on an account when one of the games that use the system (currently Counter-Strike: Source, Day of Defeat: Source, The Ship (computer game) and Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45) are purchased, when guest passes are first enabled for a game, and in some cases when a first pass or set of passes given to an account reaches its expiry date.

Free Weekends Free Weekends are multi-player promotions in which a game becomes free to play on Steam for a weekend, or sometimes an entire week. When the promotion ends users can no longer play the game, but have already downloaded everything they need to continue doing so once they have bought a copy.

Free Weekends are criticized by existing players for flooding a game’s servers with newbies, and allowing Cheating in online games free reign.

Hardware promotions Steam keeps a record of the hardware in the computer it is running on for various purposes (see #Statistic gathering), one of which is enabling hardware manufacturers to run after-sale promotions directly to their customers. The first (and currently only) example of this is the "ATi Steam Offer", which gives free copies of Half-Life 2: Lost Coast and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch to all owners of Radeon video cards, one bundle per card, and is to last from May 2007 to an unspecified future date.

The promotional games are handed out based on a unique hardware ID, which can be spoofed. This leads to a user illegitimately gaining almost infinite sets of the promo games (that may well be sold on, to give a motive for such actions), and also to the legitimate owner of the hardware with that ID being unable to claim their games.

ATi has also announced on their website that copies of Steam will be distributed alongside all Catalyst driver and software installations throughout early 2008.

Statistic gathering Steam collects and reports anonymous and non-identifying metrics of its usage, stability, and performance, both from the client and from some games. While some of these data are reported back to the public in aggregate form, for instance hardware specifications and gameplay statistics, other data has been known to be collected without any indication.

To date the only known example of undisclosed collection 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."

The full extent of statistic gathering is unknown.

Mod integration In most games there is no built-in utility for launching Mod (computer gaming), but Steam’s interface treats them in almost exactly the same way as it does purchased games; including, for some, browsable pages on the official site. Mods appear in a user’s list of installed games with the icons, developer links and other such details that are used by full games. They can also use VAC, Friends, the server browser, and any other Steam feature supported by their parent game. They cannot currently be distributed through Steam however, and as such do not automatically update or use the GCF or NCF file formats.

Currently, mods for Valve’s GoldSrc games, Valve’s Source engine games and Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 can be integrated.

History Steam's development began at an uncertain date prior to 2002. Prior to 'Steam', its codenames were 'Grid' and 'Gazelle'. It was revealed to the public on 22 March 2002 at the Game Developers Conference, and was presented purely as a distribution network: no mention of purchases was made. During his presentation Gabe Newell claimed "consumers purchase and start applications faster than if they install them from a CD" and cited the " 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 hadn't any further involvement in Steam until Company of Heroes was released in 2007).

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 February 27 2002. 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 (computer game) are two 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.

Early Instability Up until early/mid 2004, Steam was a very unstable system in all regards. Catastrophic Crash (computing), constant connectivity issues, along with a broken Friends system 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 — 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.

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 has 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. This view is supported by the list of known Steam 3.0 technologies:

Valve Anti-Cheat 2See Valve Anti-Cheat User Interface 3.0Designed to accommodate a larger catalogue Supported à la carte purchasing Provided room for future expansion Released on October 11, 2005 after a six-day public beta. Friends 3.0Based on new User Datagram Protocol connection technology Allows future expansion 'Guest Passes' now re-offered Beta opened January 31, 2006, refreshed on March 13, 2006 Officially released May 31 2006, ahead of Half-Life 2: Episode One.

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.

Valve Cyber Café Program Steam has also allowed Valve to run a subscription-based cyber café program , the Valve Cyber Café Program, which is 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.

Program benefits In addition to what is offered by the regular Steam client (see above), the Cybercafé program:

Program drawbacks

Criticism of Steam Privacy concerns The matter of privacy has been raised, as it is necessary to validate every Steam game online before it can be launched (an "offline mode" can subsequently be used). There are no alternate methods of activation such as via telephone or fax, which causes the system to deny access to those without internet connections.

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."

The full extent of undisclosed data collection is unknown.

Possibility of system failure A topic of discussion among Steam users is how their games will be activated if Steam is no longer available. Valve head Gabe Newell made the following statement on the issue:

{{cquote|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.-->

However, this speculative public statement attributed to Mr. Newell is not contained or otherwise reflected in the current Steam Subscriber Agreement (found at http://www.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=subscriber_agreement). According to the Steam Subscriber Agreement, Steam's availability is not guaranteed and Valve is under no legal obligation to release any such update disabling Steam's authentication in any event.

Temporary system failures, most recently the December 2006 Seattle storms that knocked out root authentication servers and brought down the entire network, must currently be weathered by users wishing to play online or make new purchases. Recent examples of such downtimes are listed in the #History section.

Resale limitations Games bought through Steam cannot legally be resold due to the unsuitability of current Proof of Purchase laws. The only valid proof in an entirely digital transaction is the credit card used during the process; as credit cards ownership cannot be transferred, neither can that of Steam-bought games. Valve term Steam purchases "subscriptions", attempting to avoid any legal paradoxes this situation might create - such as Anti-competitive practices violations from the dampening secondary market of their and their clients' products.

Valve does not explicitly prohibit account transfers, but claims that, as a source of fraud within their systems, they are ill-advised.

When a buyer purchases a boxed game he/she must authenticate it with the registration of a Serial number. In the event that the CD Key that they have registered is already in Steam's database, the user is required to submit an image of the physical purchased CD Key for verification purposes, as well as a purchase receipt less than 90 days old. However, if the user has bought used software, either from a vendor, online auction or another user, Valve will not transfer the CD Key to the new owner, rendering the software useless.

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. Updates are checked for whenever Steam starts online: if there is an update available, the user is forced to wait for update process to finish before being able to play again (Steam is able to stream games when online, allowing them to be run before all of their content is downloaded and avoiding this issue, but the feature is rarely used even by Valve).

Furthermore, once applied an update cannot be rolled back by the user. While this is beneficial when a problematic update needs to be recalled and in ensuring client compatibility in online games, it prevents users with unusual or unrecognized issues reverting their software to its previous, functional state.

As of 27 June 2007 Steam can be set to stay offline and never attempt a connection, allowing users to reliably prevent it from ever connecting without needing external software.

Changes to minimum specifications On 26 February 2007 an update to Steam was released that warned users running Windows 98 and Windows Me that past 30 June 2007 their systems would no longer be able to run the program, or any games that previously supported those operating systems, and which also warned users without Streaming SIMD Extensions processors that Source engine games would no longer function "within the next few months" if they did not upgrade their computer hardware (due to the impending release of its Source engine#Multiprocessor optimizations).

Although both of these new criteria most likely affected only a small percentage of Steam users based upon the results of the Steam Hardware Survey (found at http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html ), these changes in system requirements clearly demonstrate how Valve's policy of forcing all Steam users to run only the latest version of the Steam software can prevent existing customers of games which require Steam from being able to play those games because their computers can no longer run Steam due to the changed system requirements.

Auto-updates and third-party mods The auto-update model can also affect the large Mod (computer gaming) 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.

This issue has largely been eliminated with Steam's beta test function, which allows mod makers to self-test their projects with an update before it is released to the wider user base. The process relies on the modders to spot errors, and is as such far from infallible (an issue with one update which crippled the pre-retail 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.

Cross-platform Support Steam is criticized by some of its users and in some cases open source advocates for not being available for Linux and Mac OS X; Valve describes it as "strictly a Microsoft Windows application". In 2005 this stance led to a discussion thread on the official web forums which accrued 1600 posts until it was closed in 2007 by a volunteer moderator.On 16 September, 2007, Valve posted a job posting on their official site looking for "Port Windows-based games to the Linux platform."

Reduced Performance Since it is required to have the Steam software running in order to play a game which requires Steam whether online or offline, this can negatively impact a game's performance, especially on older computers. This is especially evident for older games, such as the original Half-Life which have been updated since their original releases to require Steam, where the memory and virtual memory usage of the Steam software sometimes surpasses that of the game itself. Even computers that could easily run a game prior to its update that requires Steam may experience noticeable or substantial performance issues such as frame rate drops when running the newer version of the game which requires Steam.

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 Trojan horse (computing), Keystroke logging, or computer virus. Some were genuine, but Valve, realizing the advent of 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 online.



Localization Steam is available in 18 languages:

See also

References External links Official Steam website - Official Steam website The Steam Community - web access to Steam's social networking features 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 CrosuS: Community-built mod download service supporting various games and mods

{{Infobox_Software2|name = Steam |logo = |screenshot = |caption = The Steam welcome screen|developer = Valve Corporation|language = [#Localization (18)|genre = Content delivery|website = www.steampowered.com-->

Steam is a [digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer and communications platform developed by Valve Corporation. It is used to digitally distribute and manage games ranging from first-person shooters and Role-Playing Games to racing games and cross-genre independent titles. Among its clients are Take-Two Interactive, Eidos Interactive, Introversion Software, Strategy First, PopCap Games, Capcom, id Software and most recently, THQ.

As of September 2, 2007 over :Category:Steam products are available on Steam, and there are approximately 13 million active users.

Client functionality Purchases Steam allows users to purchase access to games through a digital distribution system. Instead of receiving a box, disc, or even CD key, purchased software is immediately attached on the Steam servers to the user’s Steam account (which is registered for free), from which it can be accessed and downloaded from anywhere that allows the use of the Steam client. Games can either be bought individually (with some exceptions) or as part of a “package” of multiple games, if one is available, which will provide better value for money.



All purchases are made from the Desktop environment through the Steam client, with an Cryptographic protocol, and users are required to enter their billing details from scratch for each purchase as Steam does not store them between transactions. Only electronic payment is accepted:



The Maestro (debit card) debit cards popular in Europe are not supported directly, but can be used in Paypal payments.

Price points Disregarding discounts and package offers, most Steam games are priced at one of the following pre-tax levels:



Steam receives criticism for the prices of games brought into its library through publisher contracts, which are almost all priced at US$49.95 or, more recently, US$39.95. In these cases Steam is frequently undercut to a large degree by physical retailers, sometimes from the moment they are made available through it. While Valve have never stated a reason for the high prices, it is worth bearing in mind Scott Miller (programmer)'s explanation of why prices for retailing games were also at US$49.95 on the Triton (content delivery) delivery service:

-->

Prices on Steam drop over time, but at a rate far slower than that of retail reductions.

Prices sometimes differ in different territories; for instance, Prey (Computer Game) was available in America for US$19.95 but was US$49.95 everywhere else., while Bioshock has a listed price of US$49.95 for some areas, such as the United States, while it is US$54.95 in other areas, such as Europe. Some regions benefit from cheaper games on Steam than in retail because Steam is based on the US dollar. Australian recommended retail price for Bioshock is $89.95 AUD ($78 USD), while the game costs only $49.95 USD on Steam.

Local VAT rates apply.

System limitations There are several limitations to the current billing system:



Downloads Instead of requiring users to seek out and download the content they want, Steam works, at a high level, in a manner analogous to a feed reader: The user selects the game they want on their computer and Steam then automates the process of downloading the content and keeping it up to date. The latest version of the game is immediately downloaded, and if there are multiple versions (e.g. a 64-bit edition) the correct one will be chosen automatically based on the computer’s hardware and/or software environment. This process happens every time Steam is started online, not just when a game is installed, ensuring that as many users as possible have the latest software.

Steam connects over its own internet Protocol (computing), independent of the HTTP or FTP protocols used by the web. It downloads only from dedicated “content servers” spread out across the world by Valve and authorised third parties, (click “View individual server statistics”) connecting to several at once to try to ensure a fast and stable connection. A common error in this process is the “content servers too busy” message – which is most likely to mean that the cached “clientregistry.blob” connection information has become corrupt, rather than its literal interpretation. Content is compressed during a download, to a currently uncertain ratio, but unpacked for local storage as it arrives.

Steam can validate its downloaded content for errors, a process that gives many of the benefits of reinstalling in a fraction of the time.

Content streaming Steam has a “Distributed File System” that allows a game to launch before it has been completely downloaded. By creating lists of files and requesting them only when about to be needed, a linear game can be begun with only the executable code and a buffer of the first few areas downloaded. In the worst-case scenario, the game will hang while Steam downloads in the background (ideally a progress bar would be displayed).

Steam’s “preloader” travels top-to-bottom through a defined list of files, whether the game is running or not, unless interrupted. The onus is almost entirely on the game developer to manage the system however, and nobody has yet developed any system that takes advantage of it beyond its built-in behaviour. In fact with a handful of exceptions only Valve’s old GoldSrc games use content streaming at all; as a result, and thanks to their age, they can be launched within seconds of their download starting on modern internet connections.

Game Cache Files Steam-integrated games download to non-compressed archive files with the extension .gcf, standing for Game Cache File, which can be found in the /SteamApps folder. The GCF format is a similar idea to the various archive formats used by other developers, such as PAK (file format) files, and has the following effects:



Games that do not fully integrate with Steam use the “No Cache File” .ncf format, which is merely an index of files pointing to a standard operating system folder in the /common subfolder.

Valve have not released a tool that allows the unrestricted browsing of GCF files, although development tools for their games can browse for files relevant to them. Third-party tool GCFScape is widely used by Valve’s mod (computer gaming) community to view and extract general data.

Social Networking

On June 20, 2007, Valve announced a major update "The Steam Community", which would allow users to setup their own personal pages on Steam, along with many other social networking tools. Valve also believes that this will be the biggest update to Steam since its initial release. This update was released as a beta on August 6, 2007 and was officially released on September 12, 2007. Users are required to make a profile, called a SteamID, which will then be attached to your Steam User account. The SteamID page of each user contains info such as the users friends, how long they have played each game for in the past two weeks, their Steam Rating, which is a rating out of 10 according to how long they have played games for, and which groups they are in.http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Steam_rating

A major new feature in the Steam Community update is the new Steam Overlay. This is a layer put on the screen, whenever the user presses a defined hot key (customizable by the user) at the same time, has buttons to change Settings, view the players in your current server (For Source and GoldSrc games only) and view your Steam Friends list. This overlay works in any Steam game, not just Source and GoldSrc games. The overlay also functions in some non-Steam games that have been added to your Steam games list..

Friends

Friends is Steam’s instant messaging service. Version 3.0 of the system was released on 31 May 2006, after several years of the broken and unmaintained version 2.0. Friends allows users of Steam accounts to enter one-to-one conversations; its defining features are its ability to be used both from the desktop and natively from games that support it, and its display of the game a user is running along with the ability to quickly join any multiplayer server he or she is connected to.

Friends is a popular attack vector for phishers trying to hijack users’ Steam accounts, as it is a semi-official channel and can be accessed without buying any games. Valve have attempted to combat this by adding phishing warning messages at the start of each conversation and banning the use of certain words (such as “valve” and “steam”) from display names.

On September 12, 2007, friends was updated with the Steam Community update. It now shows the users avatar by each users name, it allows Voice chat to be used as well as text, it changes the color of the users name depending on if they are Ingame/Online/etc, you can now make multi-user chats, and it now shows when users come online/send you a message/play a game, with a small fading rectangle in the bottom right corner of the screen.

Server Browser Steam’s server browser allows users to search, filter, bookmark and join internet and Local Area Network games for the titles that integrate with it. It works from the desktop and from a game's menu, and integrates with Friends to show a centralised list of servers to which contacts are connected.

Valve Anti-Cheat Valve's proprietary anti-cheat solution incorporated into Steam. See Valve Anti-Cheat.

Promotions Alongside standard pop-up “Update News” adverts and price discounts, Steam provides Guest Pass, Free Weekend and Hardware promotions, all of which unique to it:

Guest Passes

Guest passes are a similar concept to that of spawned installation of games. Each pass allows the owner of the associated multiplayer game to hand out unrestricted but time-limited access by entering the Steam account name or e-mail address of a friend. The system is designed to replace standard multiplayer demos that inevitably crowd users into demo servers where they are either picked on by experienced players or unable to play with the full version’s player base.

Guest Passes are made generally available on an account when one of the games that use the system (currently Counter-Strike: Source, Day of Defeat: Source, The Ship (computer game) and Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45) are purchased, when guest passes are first enabled for a game, and in some cases when a first pass or set of passes given to an account reaches its expiry date.

Free Weekends Free Weekends are multi-player promotions in which a game becomes free to play on Steam for a weekend, or sometimes an entire week. When the promotion ends users can no longer play the game, but have already downloaded everything they need to continue doing so once they have bought a copy.

Free Weekends are criticized by existing players for flooding a game’s servers with newbies, and allowing Cheating in online games free reign.

Hardware promotions Steam keeps a record of the hardware in the computer it is running on for various purposes (see #Statistic gathering), one of which is enabling hardware manufacturers to run after-sale promotions directly to their customers. The first (and currently only) example of this is the "ATi Steam Offer", which gives free copies of Half-Life 2: Lost Coast and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch to all owners of Radeon video cards, one bundle per card, and is to last from May 2007 to an unspecified future date.

The promotional games are handed out based on a unique hardware ID, which can be spoofed. This leads to a user illegitimately gaining almost infinite sets of the promo games (that may well be sold on, to give a motive for such actions), and also to the legitimate owner of the hardware with that ID being unable to claim their games.

ATi has also announced on their website that copies of Steam will be distributed alongside all Catalyst driver and software installations throughout early 2008.

Statistic gathering Steam collects and reports anonymous and non-identifying metrics of its usage, stability, and performance, both from the client and from some games. While some of these data are reported back to the public in aggregate form, for instance hardware specifications and gameplay statistics, other data has been known to be collected without any indication.

To date the only known example of undisclosed collection 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."

The full extent of statistic gathering is unknown.

Mod integration In most games there is no built-in utility for launching Mod (computer gaming), but Steam’s interface treats them in almost exactly the same way as it does purchased games; including, for some, browsable pages on the official site. Mods appear in a user’s list of installed games with the icons, developer links and other such details that are used by full games. They can also use VAC, Friends, the server browser, and any other Steam feature supported by their parent game. They cannot currently be distributed through Steam however, and as such do not automatically update or use the GCF or NCF file formats.

Currently, mods for Valve’s GoldSrc games, Valve’s Source engine games and Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 can be integrated.

History Steam's development began at an uncertain date prior to 2002. Prior to 'Steam', its codenames were 'Grid' and 'Gazelle'. It was revealed to the public on 22 March 2002 at the Game Developers Conference, and was presented purely as a distribution network: no mention of purchases was made. During his presentation Gabe Newell claimed "consumers purchase and start applications faster than if they install them from a CD" and cited the " 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 hadn't any further involvement in Steam until Company of Heroes was released in 2007).

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 February 27 2002. 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 (computer game) are two 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.

Early Instability Up until early/mid 2004, Steam was a very unstable system in all regards. Catastrophic Crash (computing), constant connectivity issues, along with a broken Friends system 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 — 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.

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 has 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. This view is supported by the list of known Steam 3.0 technologies:

Valve Anti-Cheat 2See Valve Anti-Cheat User Interface 3.0Designed to accommodate a larger catalogue Supported à la carte purchasing Provided room for future expansion Released on October 11, 2005 after a six-day public beta. Friends 3.0Based on new User Datagram Protocol connection technology Allows future expansion 'Guest Passes' now re-offered Beta opened January 31, 2006, refreshed on March 13, 2006 Officially released May 31 2006, ahead of Half-Life 2: Episode One.

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.

Valve Cyber Café Program Steam has also allowed Valve to run a subscription-based cyber café program , the Valve Cyber Café Program, which is 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.

Program benefits In addition to what is offered by the regular Steam client (see above), the Cybercafé program:

Program drawbacks

Criticism of Steam Privacy concerns The matter of privacy has been raised, as it is necessary to validate every Steam game online before it can be launched (an "offline mode" can subsequently be used). There are no alternate methods of activation such as via telephone or fax, which causes the system to deny access to those without internet connections.

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."

The full extent of undisclosed data collection is unknown.

Possibility of system failure A topic of discussion among Steam users is how their games will be activated if Steam is no longer available. Valve head Gabe Newell made the following statement on the issue:

{{cquote|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.-->

However, this speculative public statement attributed to Mr. Newell is not contained or otherwise reflected in the current Steam Subscriber Agreement (found at http://www.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=subscriber_agreement). According to the Steam Subscriber Agreement, Steam's availability is not guaranteed and Valve is under no legal obligation to release any such update disabling Steam's authentication in any event.

Temporary system failures, most recently the December 2006 Seattle storms that knocked out root authentication servers and brought down the entire network, must currently be weathered by users wishing to play online or make new purchases. Recent examples of such downtimes are listed in the #History section.

Resale limitations Games bought through Steam cannot legally be resold due to the unsuitability of current Proof of Purchase laws. The only valid proof in an entirely digital transaction is the credit card used during the process; as credit cards ownership cannot be transferred, neither can that of Steam-bought games. Valve term Steam purchases "subscriptions", attempting to avoid any legal paradoxes this situation might create - such as Anti-competitive practices violations from the dampening secondary market of their and their clients' products.

Valve does not explicitly prohibit account transfers, but claims that, as a source of fraud within their systems, they are ill-advised.

When a buyer purchases a boxed game he/she must authenticate it with the registration of a Serial number. In the event that the CD Key that they have registered is already in Steam's database, the user is required to submit an image of the physical purchased CD Key for verification purposes, as well as a purchase receipt less than 90 days old. However, if the user has bought used software, either from a vendor, online auction or another user, Valve will not transfer the CD Key to the new owner, rendering the software useless.

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. Updates are checked for whenever Steam starts online: if there is an update available, the user is forced to wait for update process to finish before being able to play again (Steam is able to stream games when online, allowing them to be run before all of their content is downloaded and avoiding this issue, but the feature is rarely used even by Valve).

Furthermore, once applied an update cannot be rolled back by the user. While this is beneficial when a problematic update needs to be recalled and in ensuring client compatibility in online games, it prevents users with unusual or unrecognized issues reverting their software to its previous, functional state.

As of 27 June 2007 Steam can be set to stay offline and never attempt a connection, allowing users to reliably prevent it from ever connecting without needing external software.

Changes to minimum specifications On 26 February 2007 an update to Steam was released that warned users running Windows 98 and Windows Me that past 30 June 2007 their systems would no longer be able to run the program, or any games that previously supported those operating systems, and which also warned users without Streaming SIMD Extensions processors that Source engine games would no longer function "within the next few months" if they did not upgrade their computer hardware (due to the impending release of its Source engine#Multiprocessor optimizations).

Although both of these new criteria most likely affected only a small percentage of Steam users based upon the results of the Steam Hardware Survey (found at http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html ), these changes in system requirements clearly demonstrate how Valve's policy of forcing all Steam users to run only the latest version of the Steam software can prevent existing customers of games which require Steam from being able to play those games because their computers can no longer run Steam due to the changed system requirements.

Auto-updates and third-party mods The auto-update model can also affect the large Mod (computer gaming) 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.

This issue has largely been eliminated with Steam's beta test function, which allows mod makers to self-test their projects with an update before it is released to the wider user base. The process relies on the modders to spot errors, and is as such far from infallible (an issue with one update which crippled the pre-retail 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.

Cross-platform Support Steam is criticized by some of its users and in some cases open source advocates for not being available for Linux and Mac OS X; Valve describes it as "strictly a Microsoft Windows application". In 2005 this stance led to a discussion thread on the official web forums which accrued 1600 posts until it was closed in 2007 by a volunteer moderator.On 16 September, 2007, Valve posted a job posting on their official site looking for "Port Windows-based games to the Linux platform."

Reduced Performance Since it is required to have the Steam software running in order to play a game which requires Steam whether online or offline, this can negatively impact a game's performance, especially on older computers. This is especially evident for older games, such as the original Half-Life which have been updated since their original releases to require Steam, where the memory and virtual memory usage of the Steam software sometimes surpasses that of the game itself. Even computers that could easily run a game prior to its update that requires Steam may experience noticeable or substantial performance issues such as frame rate drops when running the newer version of the game which requires Steam.

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 Trojan horse (computing), Keystroke logging, or computer virus. Some were genuine, but Valve, realizing the advent of 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 online.



Localization Steam is available in 18 languages:

See also

References External links Official Steam website - Official Steam website The Steam Community - web access to Steam's social networking features 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 CrosuS: Community-built mod download service supporting various games and mods



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