Steam how it works. Steam - what are these programs

Steam is a service that is primarily useful to people who are fond of computer games. What gives us Steam? With it, you can activate your new toy, download its components via the Internet, download updates and news about the game.

Steam is the brainchild of Valve. Accordingly, Steam works with Valve products and products of those developers who have signed a contract with Valve.

In addition, through Steam, without leaving your home and not being distracted from your computer, you can buy new games from Valve and other developers.

Who works with the Steam service?

  • Activision;
  • codemasters;
  • Eidos Interactive;
  • EA Games;
  • Epic Games;
  • GSC Game World;
  • id Software;
  • Sega;
  • Atari;
  • Rockstar Games;
  • Ubisoft;
  • N.C.Soft;
  • and many others.

According to statistics for October 2010, up to 3,000 products are sold through Steam, and the number of registered users reaches 30 million. The main products of Steam are computer games, trailers and mods for games.

The very word Steam in English means "steam".

It is impossible to overestimate the impact of the appeared service on the modern market of computer games. Developers of independent games found the most serious development. Previously, large publishing houses were very wary of new non-standard games, since it was not known in advance how profitable these developments would be. Now the situation has changed. Indie games are distributed through Steam, giving a budding team of programmers a chance to get into the serious business of computer entertainment.

Steam is a new word in the sales of computer games over the Internet. The method by which Steam operates is called digital distribution. If the publisher uses this method, then he significantly reduces his costs on a number of items. No need to spend money on the production of discs, packaging, printing covers and their transportation. Now everything is possible through the Internet. Accordingly, the financial risk of independent games is reduced by several times. In addition, if an indie game finds particular popularity among Steam users, then the developers will have the opportunity to get a contract with a major publisher.

There is no doubt that digital distribution is a step into the future. These technologies are used not only in the field of computer games, but also in the music business. There comes a time not of material values, but a time of ideas that bring material profit.

"You can break a sword, you can't destroy an idea." (Victor Hugo)

", - experienced gamers say goodbye to each other. And any avid lover of computer games understands what is at stake. About a place where each of them is a superhero. About where you want to return again and again. About the virtual "home" where the games dear to the heart live.

Steam is...

You probably already guessed what Steam is. This is a gaming platform, a service designed for buying and launching computer games, communication between players, creating gaming communities and much more related to gaming.

Being the brainchild of Valve, in the early 2000s, Steam was used only to distribute and activate the products of this developer. Today it is a full-fledged social network with many features, like Facebook or VK, which supports more than 10,000 games and applications from different manufacturers: Sega, Epik Games, Ubisoft, Rockstar Games, etc., many of which are free.

The Steam platform exists in a web version, accessible through a browser, and as an application for all major stationary and mobile operating systems - Windows, OS X, Linux, PlayStation 3, Android, iOS, as well as Samsung Smatr TV Tizen OS (with restrictions) . Installation and use of the service is completely free, payment is charged only for the content.

Features, pros and cons of the platform

AT last years Steam's functionality has grown to such an extent that even a developer cannot say which of its functions is the main one. Its users are provided the following possibilities:

  • play on any supported device;
  • buy promotional content with a 50-75% discount and play paid games for free, and such promotions are held almost constantly;
  • install game updates in a priority order - the platform does this automatically;
  • do not think about the safety of game data - Steam also takes care of it;
  • create and save backup copies of game distributions;
  • activate supported games purchased in boxed versions;
  • buy games as a gift to other users;
  • return the money spent if you didn’t like the game (the opportunity lasts up to 14 days after the purchase, provided that the toy was launched no longer than 2 hours);
  • create personal pages and groups, join communities;
  • find like-minded people and friends;
  • exchange messages and communicate in the built-in voice chat;
  • share achievements;
  • exchange, buy and sell game items - inventory, cards, etc.;
  • take screenshots and shoot videos, post videos on YouTune;
  • record and broadcast streams without third-party programs;
  • receive the latest news about the events of the game world;
  • listen to music stored on the device instead of game soundtracks;
  • give other users access to your library of games (family sharing);
  • customize the design of your personal page to your liking;
  • use the developer's technical support services.

And since Steam is the official game content store, the products that are distributed through it are 100% legal and safe.

Among the shortcomings service users attributed:

  • The inability to use the means of obtaining illegal privileges over other players (cheats).
  • The inability to run pirated content.
  • High risk of losing your account, and with it - cash that are kept on the balance sheet. Steam user accounts are very attractive to attackers and are often attacked. To prevent attacks, the platform has a built-in Steam Guard, but it does not guarantee complete security.

Someone thinks that buying content through Steam is too expensive and for this reason does not use the platform. However, it makes it possible not only to spend, but also to earn real money. One of the ways to earn money mentioned above is the sale of game equipment. Also, some users manage to unofficially sell previously purchased games, and experienced gamers earn money by promoting and selling upgraded accounts.

How to register on Steam

To register on the Steam service, launch a pre-installed application or open the store.steampowered.com website, go to the "Login" section and click the "Create an account" button.

Enter your email address, its confirmation and verification code. Accept the user agreement and confirm the registration by clicking on the link that will come in the email.

After confirmation, return to the registration section, come up with a unique name for yourself that will be displayed to other users, and a password. Click Finish Registration.

How to link a payment instrument to your Steam account and replenish your account in the system

To link a bank card to your Steam profile, go to the "About account" menu. In the Store Operations section, click Add a payment method to this account.

Select a payment system from the list and enter the card details — number, expiration date, CVV/CVC code.

In the "Account Information" section, enter your real name, surname, postal code, residential address and phone number. In the fields "Settlement address" and "Settlement address 2" enter the street, house/building and apartment number.

Once a card has been linked, Steam Store purchases will be debited from the card's balance.

Beyond the tethered bank cards, you can use the money on your personal Steam account to pay for content.

To replenish your account balance, do the following:

  • Click the "+Top up balance" button in the "Store Operations" section. Choose one of the proposed amounts (minimum 150 rubles).

  • Choose a convenient payment method. In the CIS countries, Visa, Mastercard, Maestro and American Express cards are available for this; payment systems PayPal, Yandex.Money and Webmoney; mobile phone account and bitcoin cryptocurrency. After making your selection, click Continue.

  • Further actions depend on the specific payment method. Complete the payment by following the instructions on the screen.

How to download games

Selection, purchase and installation of games are made through the "Shop" section of the main menu. The distribution of content by genre and other categories (new releases, top sellers, etc.) is in the column on the left.

Clicking on the banner of the game will take you to the purchase page. More than detailed information about the offer: trailers, gameplay screenshots, description, system requirements, as well as the game distributions themselves and additional paid content. This page contains information about discounts and promotions.

To buy something from the offer, click the "Add to Cart" button next to the product and, following the instructions, make the payment. The purchased game and additional content will be downloaded to your Library.

How to add friends

To add Steam users as friends, go to the main menu section named after you and select "Friends". Enter your username in the Find Friends field. After it is found, click "Add to friends".

In addition, the "Add to friends" button is present on the personal pages of Steam users:

And on the personal page of your profile in the "Your friends" section there is a user search string by login and game name (the system shows who you played with):

The add friend function becomes available after replenishing the account balance or purchases in the amount of $5 or more.

In general, the Steam platform is quite simple to understand and master, just wander through the sections - and everything becomes clear without explanation. Moreover, it is fully translated into Russian, and in addition to it, it supports 25 more languages ​​of the world.

Before you figure out how to use Steam, it is worth explaining what the program is and why it is needed. Steam is a well-known and largest digital store of games and updates for them on the Internet. The name translated into Russian sounds like "valve". Users among themselves call it simply: "Steam". With the help of Steam, you can purchase more than three thousand products of this subject and not only. At the moment, Steam has more than 63 million users, which is an undoubted record for such a resource. The owner and creator of the store is the well-known company Valve Software.

Steam Features

  • free use of already purchased and activated games,
  • automatic free game updates. Updates are installed automatically upon release,
  • game world news,
  • news information,
  • search for games and servers for them by various criteria and filters,
  • buying a game for another person as a gift at your own expense,
  • various communities of interest,
  • chat between users.

How to install the program and how to use it to activate games and use all the variety of resource features? Consider step by step instructions.

Installing Steam and creating an account

  • For Steam installations, you need an Internet connection. It is best to download the program from the official website.
  • During installation, the program will ask for a username and password. If you are installing Steam for the first time, you will need to go through a formal registration process. To do this, fill in the following fields: "Account name" - your unique name (login) in the Steam system, "Password" - respectively the password. In the next field, you will need to re-enter the specified password. Next, press the "Next" key
  • If the login you created already exists in the system, you will be given the opportunity to change it to a new one.
  • Next, enter an active email address in both fields and select a secret question that you may need to recover your password in the future. Answer the question and press the Next button.
  • The system will display a message on the screen about the completion of registration. Click "Finish"

Entrance

When you first enter in the "Login" field, respectively, enter the login, and in the "Password" field - the password. Next, press the "Remember my password" button for convenience. The next time you log in to your account, it will be done automatically. Yes, and this will allow you to run games without connecting to the Internet, which is very convenient if suddenly the connection is lost, but you want to play. Press the "Login" key.

Game activation

Registered, logged in, looked around and now the key question is how to activate the games? How to use Steam? To activate the game, you must perform the following steps:

  • Open the menu item of the program called "Play Games"
  • In this window, click on the name of the game
  • If your copy of the game has not yet been activated, Steam will automatically offer you to buy it.
  • Click on "Register a product I already own"
  • Next, you need to enter the individual registration number of the copy of the purchased game and press the "Next" button.
  • After checking the number and downloading updates, the program will complete the activation

Payment for purchases

Payment in the Steam store is carried out in the following ways:

  • credit cards Visa, Mastercard, AMEX, Discover, JCB
  • debit cards Visa, Mastercard
  • PayPal
  • webmoney
  • clickandbuy
  • Yandex money
  • Xsolla
  • QIWI Wallet
  • And others less common (depending on the region).
  • An important point to remember, in the context of how to use Steam, is that it is not possible for two users to play from the same account.
  • if, when downloading an activated game, the speed is lower than your connection can provide, you need to go to "Settings" - "Download" and change the download server in the context menu.
  • look for the secrets of games in various thematic communities.
  • be sure to wait for the games to load at 100% and do not allow interruptions in the Internet connection, because otherwise, the entire activation procedure will need to be started again.

Steam is a digital service for sale computer games, programs and other similar content, developed by Valve. Distinctive feature stim is what's in it for sale exclusively licensed content, so that users can not be afraid to catch a computer virus, trojan or other malicious software on their PC.

Why you need Steam

First of all, Steam will be required for purchases and launch the vast majority of computer games. Without this service, you you can't officially play a number of games, because they are distributed exclusively with the help of shop Steam.

The app also gives you access to multiplayer features such as multiplayer, various user communities, reviews of various applications and much more.

It is difficult to imagine the modern game development industry without Steam, because the service has completely occupied its niche among the players, surpassing such services as Origin, Battle.Net, GOG.COM, Windows Store and other digital goods stores in popularity.

Advantages and disadvantages

Like any existing product, Steam has a number of characteristic benefits and cons. Despite the constant development, the service is still very far from ideal.

Advantages steam:

  • Access to a huge amount of the most diverse content, which would be incredibly difficult or even impossible to obtain in other ways;
  • High stability system operation;
  • Quite democratic prices to content for sale, such as computer games or software;
  • Availability of various promotions and discounts, as a result of which prices can become even lower (in some cases, the discount on any game reached 99 percent);
  • Access to quality multiplayer thanks to servers provided by Valve;
  • Possibility take advantage purchased content on any PC that has Steam installed and logged into an account;
  • Opportunity to get acquainted with reviews for absolutely any product sold in a digital store;
  • Availability program versions not only for Windows, but also for Linux and MacOS.

Flaws steam:

  • To install and run absolutely any game or application, you need high speed access to the Internet (without it, all the content you bought will not be available);
  • Terrible job technical support, in case of problems, Steam technical support workers can respond for weeks;
  • Some games or programs unavailable on Steam (for example, all parts of the multiplayer shooter Battlefield);
  • The program is constantly random access memory and loads system resources, which is why weak Steam PCs can force to brake or hang up;
  • In case of loss or theft of the account, access to all games, programs and other purchased content will be lost. And given the terrible quality of technical support, it will not be possible to quickly restore everything.

Steam - service for pumping money out of your wallets digital distribution of licensed video games, programs and films, and TV series and music may also appear in the future.

The developer and owner of the service is the world-famous company Valve - the developer of such popular games as Counter-Strike, Dota 2, Half-Life, Portal, Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress and others.

A bit of history

The Steam service began its history in 1999, but it officially appeared in 2002 and then it was not yet a platform for sale and was simply an unnecessary component to games.

Around the same time, Valve comes up with the idea of ​​selling digital content through its service. At the time, such an idea was very expensive to implement, so the company decided to partner with Amazon, Yahoo, or Cisco to help solve the problem. Negotiations between them did not lead to anything, and Valve begins to bring the idea to life on its own.

So already in 2003, sales of digital goods in the Steam store started, and in 2004, with the release of the game Half-Life 2, the presence of a Steam client became mandatory.

A year later, games from other developers begin to appear intensively on Steam.

The service develops, new functions appear, the design changes several times and after going quite a long way to become the way we see it today.

More information about the history of the service can be found by clicking on the links:

  • Steam History: Wikipedia
  • Steam Story: Steam User Content

What is Steam?

If I were asked to briefly and clearly give a person an answer to the question “what is Steam?”, Then I would say something like this:

Steam is a service that provides access to thousands of licensed products, mainly games. Here you can buy the game for real money and immediately download the licensed version to your computer.

All purchased games will be tied to your account and you will be able to access them at any time, years later and even from another country. Even if the game is removed from the service for some reason, you will still be able to download and play it if you bought it before the removal.

In addition to paid products, there are many free ones, and some of them are really high quality and worth your attention.

In addition, Steam has a social part, that is, you can add other users as friends, share achievements, screenshots, videos from games, etc. with them.


What is Steam for?

I decided to answer this question by listing all the positive aspects of this project:

    • A huge catalog of games with easy search and navigation makes it easy to find and purchase games. Your collection will always be with you, even when you have to reinstall operating system Or even change your computer. A couple of clicks and the library will be restored. It's convenient.
    • Steam is famous for spontaneous sales and promotions, and the discounts themselves have become a calling card. Although we are not talking about new products, you can definitely get old games that were released a year or more ago with a good discount, up to 90%. The biggest sales are the Summer Sale and the Winter Sale. There are also less global sales, such as Autumn, or dedicated to some holiday, such as Halloween. There are also mini-sales - all games from one developer or one publisher receive discounts. And that is not all. Every week, several games also get good discounts and “free weekends”, which means you can play this game for free on the weekend.
    • Steam has long been not only a trading platform, but also a kind of social network. Convenient communication with friends, social services (comments, likes, etc.) and many online games that have been developed thanks to Steam.
    • Do not forget about other useful services. For example, Steam Family Sharing allows you to share games with your family or friends. There is also Steam Cloud, which makes it possible to store settings and saves from games on Valve's servers. This means that even if you lose all data from your hard drive, you can continue the game thanks to the cloud storage of your saves.
    • If a game or other product turned out to be bad or you didn’t like it stupidly, you can cancel the purchase, thereby returning your money. But it is worth noting that the game can only be returned when you have played it for no more than two hours. This opportunity encourages developers to release the highest quality product, and you are guaranteed the fairness of the service.
  • Steam provide the opportunity to receive money to our users. Ordinary players will definitely not be able to earn much, but $ 10 per month (if you work with several accounts) can be received by selling game cards, things, emoticons, backgrounds, and more. But designers have a place to turn around, as they can create their own models of items for the workshop.
  • Steam has become a real paradise for indie developers. Indeed, in the vastness of the entire Internet, a small project can easily be rubbed, but Steam is easily able to raise a worthwhile product to the top.
  • As mentioned above, there are many online games on Steam that people from all over the world can play. However, there are some users who play with cheats and other auxiliary programs. Especially for such games and players, an anti-cheat was developed, which is not perfect, then the most “range” cheats are able to detect and prohibit the player from playing this game for life on this account. In addition, Valve is preparing a neural network that should learn to detect cheating on its own.