/steam/ - General

Thread for discussion of the Steam client itself
Retro edition

Reminder that if you have a potato PC disabling the Steam Overlay can save you a few FPS.

Other urls found in this thread:

steamskins.org/old-flat-green-skin/
github.com/kotajacob/wal_steam
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

I may as well ask this here. I still have my HL2 CDs from 2004. Do you think it'd be possible to rip the original brown Steam client from it and use it?

404 in 3, 2..

you should be able to
not sure why you'd want to, but you can

Because the new one is bloated and sucks.

No, the skin has changed beyond compare since then. This is the closest out there:

steamskins.org/old-flat-green-skin/

Possible? Maybe, depends on bow much if the client is on the disc. You .ight also need to run it in compatibility mode, or on a xp vm. It wouldnt have any functionality regardless.

I meant actually use the client itself, not just the skin. Will it just update itself as soon as I install it? There's not much point then.

any way to remove avatars from steam chat windows? theres so many wasted space.
>rip the original brown Steam client and use it
does it have the old steam installer? sure, but you'd just have to disconnect yourself from the internet to stop it from checking updates (or block the executables in the firewall)
in fact if its THAT old i wonder if it will even be allowed to update

Or you can just install the good old green skin..
steamskins.org/old-flat-green-skin/

I'm gonna give it a shot later and see if it's possible. But my gut is telling me no.

It's definitely the original CDs from 2004 though.

Haven't played Ricochet in years and the game itself is dead, are there any other games like it?

>freesbee throwing sims where you can strafe in mid-air
Armagetron has that kind of artstyle i guess
can you describe ricochet in more detail

>Pre 2002: The problem

Valve realised that players were often out of the loop with updates – especially in games such as Counter-Strike where the whole
community may be disconnected for days while updates were being downloaded. Valve wanted to make the process easier by creating a
client that would deal with updates, bans and joining servers. Valve originally contacted Yahoo, Microsoft and RealNetworks to help
them create a client, all parties were uninterested in the idea and Valve decided then to do it themselves.

Valve released a Steam beta in 2002 to around 75,000 testers to see how it would cope with Counter Strike 1.6 at the time it was an
optional component (unless playing CS 1.6), it was only until 2003 that the client was mandatory with its official public release. At
this time Steam was not a client for selling games.

>msn
>xp
i want to go back

>2003-2006: Unforeseen consequences

When the client was officially released in 2003 Valve hit a major snag of not being able to keep up with the demand of the amount of
people who wanted to download the client. Valve could barely keep the Steam website online. Gabe stated “This issue scares the pants
off of us. Every time we think we understand the aggregate demand that can be created by the community, we find that we have
underestimated it catastrophically." Ironically the situation was so bad that Valve put the Steam client on download sites
such as FilePlanet which Steam was supposed to get rid of.

But Steam’s real test was when Valve released Half-Life 2 in 2004, this was the first single player game on Steam and one of the most
anticipated games in recent history. All retail copies and online copies needed to go through Steam in order to play. To help ease this
burden a pre-load option was given so the game could be downloaded before the release date.

Steam was unable to cope with the demands of new accounts and downloads and this resulted in many annoyed gamers and journalists
who complained about the online authentication process as being frustrating to deal with. It was panned by everyone and turned into a
running joke. Many users also questioned the fact why a single player game such as HL2 needed to be activated and played online.

It was during this time that Valve started asking developers to sign up for Steam, Valve started contacting indie developers and
publishers. Games such as Darwinia, AudioSurf and Kung Fu RagDoll started to appear on the service. Valve were soon able to grab
ID Software and other major publishers onto the service. During this period not much work was going on the steam infrastructure but
Steam was able to cope with the concurrent users and some faith was restored with the client when HL2: Episode 1 was released.

2007- 2009: The social explosion

Valve continued to improve the service and during this period were able to sign major publishers such as Square-Enix, EA, Activision,
Capcom and others onboard. 2007 was a good year for Steam. Releases such as the Orange Box, Call of Duty 4, Bioshock and
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. helped boost its user count.

In late September 2007 Valve released the Steam community upgrade for steam. This enabled players to have profiles which people could
create and visit other friends and gamers; this was set up before The Orange Box was released – mostly for TF2. The social element also
enabled achievements, player stats, groups and comments. In a way this was the start of creating a social ecosystem that faired up to
console versions of games which could use the XBLA or PSN infrastructure.

It was during 2008 when Valve offered Steamworks to developers, this API allowed developers to use the steam client features such as
achievements, networking, cloud saves and player statistics to 3rd parties. This was beneficial to publishers as it allowed PC gamers
to finally have a system that was comparable to the console counterparts.
2008 also saw the official partnership of EA on Steam, games such as Mass Effect and Spore on Steam. Other games such as
Dead Space and Mirrors Edge four their way onto the Steam platform eventually. This relationship only lasted for a few years unfortunately.

>2010 – 2013: The unstoppable Steam train

It was 2010 that steam started to progress dramatically, in the last 3 years steam has seen more development than ever before in its
lifespan. One of the greatest changes was the new client that used the Webkit engine for cross platform compatibility. During this
period steam saw profits that doubled every year and it’s user base skyrocketing.

In early 2010 Valve confirmed the rumours that Steam was coming to OSX, this was met with much anticipation considering that Apple
never pushed for gaming on their own platform. To help ease OSX users into the steam eco-system Valve offered Portal for free. Valve
also started porting all their source games to run on OSX. Valve coined the phrase of ‘SteamPlay’ a method that allowed users to have
a license to a game without needing to buy a separate license for another platform.

Steam in recent years have also moved into other platforms such as PS3, Mobile and most recently Linux. The main reasons for these
new platforms is to have greater integration of steamworks on other devices as well as not being tied down to one OS, Gabe Newell
has recently mentioned his disappoint with Windows 8 and its one of the reasons why Steam has moved onto other OS’s.

The steam Workshop enabled players to help create content for games, this was heavily used in Portal 2, users could create levels
using the Hammer sdk, upload their content and have it downloaded and rated by other members. This has helped developers who
want their game to be modded to get a grasp on what the community can achieve, one of the bigger successes of Steam Workshop is
Skyrim which has amounted to thousands of user created mods.

Valve listed one of the problems with Steam is the fact that only a small handful of people actually checked what games could be on steam, depending on their bias this could be a problem, as well as being very slow. To combat this Valve released Steam Greenlight, a service that allowed the steam community to vote for games they deemed worthy to be on the service. Since its introduction over a year ago it’s been meet with mixed reviews, many people considered the process slow and arduous for developers to get their games green-lit. Valve has admitted problems and has started to work on making the process smoother, recently Steam greenlit 100 games which shows the service is seeing some work being done.

Big Picture Mode introduced in 2012 and it was Steam’s first steps into the living room, Features such as a ten foot interface and allowing games to have custom FOV options helped PC gamers play on the big screen. In that same year Valve hinted on making on hardware and a ‘Steambox’. Valve was interested in working with partners, however no offical partnership has been confirmed.

In recent times, valve has been fixated with "games as a service" aka micro-transactions, (thanks to the success of TF2, DOTA2 and steam trading) Steam has introduced badges and steam levels, rewarding players for playing games and letting them craft cards to obtain cosmetic items for their profile. This has created a fascinating cut-throat market on which Steam users are trying to cash in as quickly as possible on cards.

Me too. I want to go back to being a 11 year old boy.

Just love how steam gives no option to disable voice calls completelly. Or even change their volume.
Great job. Fucking retards.

anyone owns a steam controller and uses the onscreen keyboard?
For some reason the os keyboard seems to use a lot of gpu processing power as everytime I open it my fans spin up

will it let you revert to that old skin again?

PINCHES HAMBRIENTINOS NEGROS Y NARIZONES HAHAHAHAHA

yes, just drop the skin in Steam/skins and pick it in "Preferences > Interface"
steamskins.org/old-flat-green-skin/
>pinche
que asco escuchar hablar a un mexicANO

Reminder to Linux users that you can unify steam with your systems theme with github.com/kotajacob/wal_steam

>using "ie" instead of "hij" or "het"
>unnecessary "ofzo"
>"nee ja"

Largo peruANO

Cucaracha GTFO

>bloated
by what metric

I remember when the removed the ability to roleplay in steam chat.

heb jij uberhaupt vrienden om mee te praten