Steam
If you're a PC gamer Steam is something that you use day in, day out and have come to grow and love over the years. For those of you who aren't PC gamers or are thinking of starting to use a PC for gaming, this is something essential that you need to know how to use.
Steam first released back in September 2003 as a website and an application for Windows, created by the Valve Corporation (the guys bee lined Half-Life, Portal and many other great FPS's) and intended to become the one stop for PC gamers to both launch and buy games for their machines. Since then the service has grown from a digital retail service and launcher to a fully fledged social networking system built around the games you play.
The Store
Games can be bought from either the 'Store' section or by retail disc and will be instantly added to your Steam library for you to install and play whenever you want, as long as you have the hard drive space and correct system requirements for the games of course. The store can be accessed by both the website (store.steampowered.com) or by the downloadable desktop application and will work with any Windows, Apple or Linux computer/laptop. You can search for games in multiple ways such as by Developer, Publisher, Genre or simply searching the name of the game you wish to find.
Steam first released back in September 2003 as a website and an application for Windows, created by the Valve Corporation (the guys bee lined Half-Life, Portal and many other great FPS's) and intended to become the one stop for PC gamers to both launch and buy games for their machines. Since then the service has grown from a digital retail service and launcher to a fully fledged social networking system built around the games you play.
The Store
Games can be bought from either the 'Store' section or by retail disc and will be instantly added to your Steam library for you to install and play whenever you want, as long as you have the hard drive space and correct system requirements for the games of course. The store can be accessed by both the website (store.steampowered.com) or by the downloadable desktop application and will work with any Windows, Apple or Linux computer/laptop. You can search for games in multiple ways such as by Developer, Publisher, Genre or simply searching the name of the game you wish to find.
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Steam offers one of the largest game libraries on the face of the planet that grows everyday, from cheap Indie titles such as Super Meat Boy all the way up to the big guns like Call of Duty, across a wide variety of genres such as shooters, racing, sports, puzzle and many more. Steam also has Daily, Midweek and Weekend sales, these sales can be of any game on the store and will often slash prices by over 50% for the indicated time period. Steam also has special yearly sales which occur during Summer and Christmas which will have most games available on the service cut in price from anywhere between 10% all the way up to 90% for the entire sale as well as special Community Votes to make a game even cheaper for a small amount of time and daily sales where the game will be even cheaper than its standard sale price for 1 day. This makes Steam one of the cheapest ways to buy your games.
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Games can be bought with a credit/debit card or by using the PayPal service, transactions are quick and safe and your games are available to download immediate, if you don't have room for the game or don't intend on playing it for a while then the game will be stored in your 'Library' for you to download whenever you want. Though Steam operates with a DRM system, you are able to download your games onto any computer and play them as long as your account is active on that computer. Your profile may only be active on one computer at a time.
The Library
Your Library is where your games are stored. The games are organized in alphabetical order and can be sorted into groups such as 'Installed', 'Favourites' and 'Genre'. When you highlight a game information about it will be shown such as recent news stories about it and containing a link to the full article, the information also includes statistics on how much you have played the game, how many achievements you have earned in it and how many friends own/are playing the game.
Your Library is where your games are stored. The games are organized in alphabetical order and can be sorted into groups such as 'Installed', 'Favourites' and 'Genre'. When you highlight a game information about it will be shown such as recent news stories about it and containing a link to the full article, the information also includes statistics on how much you have played the game, how many achievements you have earned in it and how many friends own/are playing the game.
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There is no limit to the amount of games you can have in your library, meaning you can have every game you will ever want on one account. You can also access the 'Tools' tab from the Library, giving you access to official tools such as the 'Source Development Kit' and the ability to host servers for multiplayer games, all tools are free and will be available to download when you own the related game.
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The Community
The Community section of Steam is something that is constantly being updated and changed as Steam and its users evolve. The Community homepage offers access to 'Game Hubs', each game on Steam has an allocated hub, within the hub you will find discussions boards, screenshots from users, videos, news, game guides and a feature dubbed 'The Workshop' (if the game is Workshop compatible).
The Workshop is where skilled community members can upload and showcase mods for games. You first enter an idea, if you get enough of a following you may upload your idea to the workshop for people to download, the mod is then instantly installed to the related game the next time you start it up. The mods downloaded from The Workshop will often be able to be toggled 'On' and 'Off' in-game meaning you don't need to fiddle around with the game files to uninstall them.
Greenlight is one of the newest additions to Steam. Greenlight allows people who enjoy making games to submit their idea to the Greenlight forums, the community can then choose to back an idea if they want to see it on the store. If a game gets enough backers Valve will publish your game for you to be sold on their store, exclusively on Steam. There is a small entrance fee to upload your game to Greenlight and Valve will only publish the most popular games, but as of now there are nearly 100 games that have been 'Greenlit' for release and around 50 games that have made it onto the store.
The Market is another new addition to the Steam Community. The Market allows you to take items you have earned in games such as Team Fortress 2 that you no longer want and sell them to other members of the Steam community for real money (Think eBay and your on the right lines) . Transactions are fast and secure, no sensitive account details of the buyer or seller are ever disclosed. Valve does take a 20% cut of all sales, but the 20% cut goes towards improving the overall Steam service so its not like they are stealing your hard earned money.
The Market also plays a big hand in the 'Trading Card' system that has been recently introduced. Participating games have a set of trading cards themed on the game that can be collected, half of the set are earned by playing the game and the other half must be earned by trading for them on the Steam marketplace. Any duplicate cards or cards you wish to not collect can be sold for money to buy cards you do want. If you aren't much of a card person you can always sell them and use the money earned from it to buy other
items on the marketplace or put the money towards a game on the Store. Trading Cards have no use on their own, but when you complete the set you are able to craft a badge for your profile, this badge is used to show people that you have collected the entire set of cards in a game and will also earn you rewards such as profile backgrounds, chat emoticons and even money off coupons for
games.
The Community section of Steam is something that is constantly being updated and changed as Steam and its users evolve. The Community homepage offers access to 'Game Hubs', each game on Steam has an allocated hub, within the hub you will find discussions boards, screenshots from users, videos, news, game guides and a feature dubbed 'The Workshop' (if the game is Workshop compatible).
The Workshop is where skilled community members can upload and showcase mods for games. You first enter an idea, if you get enough of a following you may upload your idea to the workshop for people to download, the mod is then instantly installed to the related game the next time you start it up. The mods downloaded from The Workshop will often be able to be toggled 'On' and 'Off' in-game meaning you don't need to fiddle around with the game files to uninstall them.
Greenlight is one of the newest additions to Steam. Greenlight allows people who enjoy making games to submit their idea to the Greenlight forums, the community can then choose to back an idea if they want to see it on the store. If a game gets enough backers Valve will publish your game for you to be sold on their store, exclusively on Steam. There is a small entrance fee to upload your game to Greenlight and Valve will only publish the most popular games, but as of now there are nearly 100 games that have been 'Greenlit' for release and around 50 games that have made it onto the store.
The Market is another new addition to the Steam Community. The Market allows you to take items you have earned in games such as Team Fortress 2 that you no longer want and sell them to other members of the Steam community for real money (Think eBay and your on the right lines) . Transactions are fast and secure, no sensitive account details of the buyer or seller are ever disclosed. Valve does take a 20% cut of all sales, but the 20% cut goes towards improving the overall Steam service so its not like they are stealing your hard earned money.
The Market also plays a big hand in the 'Trading Card' system that has been recently introduced. Participating games have a set of trading cards themed on the game that can be collected, half of the set are earned by playing the game and the other half must be earned by trading for them on the Steam marketplace. Any duplicate cards or cards you wish to not collect can be sold for money to buy cards you do want. If you aren't much of a card person you can always sell them and use the money earned from it to buy other
items on the marketplace or put the money towards a game on the Store. Trading Cards have no use on their own, but when you complete the set you are able to craft a badge for your profile, this badge is used to show people that you have collected the entire set of cards in a game and will also earn you rewards such as profile backgrounds, chat emoticons and even money off coupons for
games.
Your Profile
The final thing to know about Steam is your profile and how it works. Of course your profile could mean potentially nothing to you as you may be interested in only playing games on Steam. However if you wish to use Steam as a social networking service you may want to spend some time upgrading your profile to earn you special features.
The final thing to know about Steam is your profile and how it works. Of course your profile could mean potentially nothing to you as you may be interested in only playing games on Steam. However if you wish to use Steam as a social networking service you may want to spend some time upgrading your profile to earn you special features.
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Firstly anyone who has purchased a game with money on Steam has the ability to add friends and communicate with them. You have no limit to the amount of friends you can have and Steam will regularly provide you with information on what they play that you also play and how they are performing in them games. You will also be able to see any posts your friends make on the Steam forums directly from your 'Activity' feed, you can then comment and rate their posts.
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You can manage and comment on groups you have both started and are a part of directly from your Profile tab. Groups are easy to start up and can be based on anything, you can also choose the privacy settings to be either open to the public or just for friends/those invited. You can also check your badges you have earned from Trading Cards or special Steam events and display them on your profile, you can also check your inventory for Trading Cards, in-game items and coupons for use in the Store.
Your profile also has a 'Level' assigned to it, when you first set your account up you will begin at level 1, you can earn XP and level up your account by buying games, participating in community events, using Trading Cards and just playing games. The higher your level the more features you unlock for your profile and the higher you are regarded on the Discussion Forums.
Your profile also has a 'Level' assigned to it, when you first set your account up you will begin at level 1, you can earn XP and level up your account by buying games, participating in community events, using Trading Cards and just playing games. The higher your level the more features you unlock for your profile and the higher you are regarded on the Discussion Forums.
That is Steam in a nutshell. There is no avoiding it if you are a PC gamer, that is unless you play exclusively EA or Ubisoft titles by
which you will need to use the Origin or Uplay services respectively, but both of these are very similar and less developed versions of Steam. Any retail game you buy requires you enter the CD Key on Steam and most websites that offer digital versions of games will provide you with a Steam Key when you purchase it.
Though Steam may sound like a nuisance and another thing to stand in the way of you and the game, Steam offers so much to you that it no longer becomes an irritating DRM barrier, it becomes a social networking platform, it becomes a competition, it becomes a way to get yourself known online and it becomes what it originally set out to be, your one stop for all things PC gaming.
Ben Hughes
