Some of Steam’s oldest user accounts are turning 20-years old this week, and Valve is celebrating the anniversary by handing out special digital badges featuring the original Steam colour scheme to the gaming veterans.
Steam first opened its figurative doors all the way back in September 2003, and has since grown into the largest digital PC gaming storefront in the world, which is actively used by tens of millions of players each day.
“In case anyone’s curious about the odd colours, that’s the colour scheme for the original Steam UI when it first launched,” commented Redditor Penndrachen, referring to the badge’s army green colour scheme, which prompted a mixed reaction from players who remembered the platform’s earliest days. “I joined in the first six months,” lamented Affectionate-Memory4. “I feel ancient rn.”
Sept 12th 2003 is the date of my account. Tomorrow it turns 20. Very nice.
Mine doesn’t turn 20 until January. I decided to wait a bit to see if it would actually fail first.
I was a daily CounterStrike 1.6 player back then. I didn’t have a choice. Literally couldn’t play unless I converted over to a Steam account.
I was playing CS as well back then. I don’t recall being forced to use steam
They closed the WON network in November I believe it was, which is when I had to make my steam account.
I played cs 1.6 at a few LAN parties, but didn’t own it. I didn’t actually join steam until after CS:S had been out a while. I actually bought a hard copy of it.
Same
I remember thinking Steam would die in less than 6 months because nobody wanted dematerialised games…
Part of the problem was how poorly steam ran when it was first introduced
I still remember that meme with the Valve gear fucking a guy in the ass. Steam was not well received.
I cursed Valve for forcing me to install Steam to play HL2.
I didn’t want it, still don’t. I actively avoided any game that required it but seems I gave up on 23 July 2011
Wow, same here. I gave up June 30, 2011.
I pirated almost any game that required it, only ended up signing up in 2018 I don’t remember why at the time but I don’t think it was to buy games since I didn’t buy any until almost a year after creating the account.
Ah man, mine is only 18 years old.
Did you make your account for Half-Life 2? My account is the same age, and that’s the game that introduced me to Steam.
I think so or CS, I’m not sure?
I made an account in January 2005, probably for HL2.
I initially resisted making an account and I hated Steam back then.
They’ve since fixed a lot of things and I now have 250+ games on it.
I have to admit, Valve is one of the few big game companies that haven’t gone to absolute shit.
Though I dread the day GabeN steps down or sells out…Another thing that I didn’t agree with back in the day was WoW, paying a subscription to play was a hard no. Still haven’t played it, which kinda sucks because I was a big fan of the old Warcraft games and of RPGs in general.
Voting with my wallet certainly didn’t change much for them, although it probably was better for me.WoW is a bit nuts: you pay a subscription fee and buy expansions? What’s the damn fee for then?
Servers ain’t free. But they could at least roll the expansion cost into the subscription.
That’s quite similar to me. I got HL2 Jan. 2005. I played Guild Wars instead of WoW because I didn’t want to pay for a sub.
The first Guildwars was great.
The second one was nice too and I played it a bunch, but there’s something about the first I can’t quite put my finger on, might just be nostalgia.
My GW2 time has been mostly spent helping people with jumping puzzles, which are kinda cut short these days by mesmers making portals for them, which I also do sometimes.
Lol mine too. I guess I wasn’t that early of an adopter.
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I remember connecting with WON before steam, nostalgia CS days
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“Only” 12 years here.
I hit 16 a few months ago.
Only 18 here.
Same here. I created my account after getting Half-Life 2 for Christmas. Hard to believe that came out in Nov 2004.
Member since 24 July 2004 here. Doesn’t feel like 20 years, but it’s also hard to imagine having ~5Tb of installed games across multiple launchers just… available. Plus emulators and other resources. Steam was a pain in the arse at first, but they made it work, and they saw beyond the limitations of dialup tech. I was all for it at the time because I had one of the few Coax connections (NTL at the time, later taken over by Virgin Media) which at that point I believe was 10Mbit… Of course, nowadays we have Gigabit FTTP rolling out throughout the UK, so this seems really quaint, but it’s pleasing to see how far we’ve come.
The US coverage still sucks. Sort your shit out guys, you’re 20 years behind the UK, and we’re a good 10 behind Norway, Hong Kong and others thanks to Twatcher.
Took me awhile to look it up, but just saw I’ve had my account since December 31, 2003. I’m just about at 20 years.
Mine’s 15 now, but back in the day I used those bootlegged Steam clients that allowed me to run Garry’s Mod for free. Those were the hackey, piratey times of 700MB aXXo DVD rips that took 1 hour to download.
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My account is @hotmail.com. I’m not sure I’m in this wave, but it must be a few weeks till I hit it.
Mine too, I hit 20 years this week 🥳
Mine is still a @yahoo login but I wont hit 20 years until February.
Oh man. It is year 20. I think I made my account like 6 days in. I have a 6 digit steam ID.
Incredibly, some of Steam’s early adopter accounts are still actively in use today, a full two decades after their creation.
There are dozens of us!
Probably thousands, if not more!
I remember how much everyone hated steam at first. The WON was fine why ruin it with this stupid steam thing?
18 as well.
aw, only 19 for me!
In November it will be 19 years for me as well.
Mine was 19 years, but I was military and got sent overseas for a few years. When I came back, I hadn’t actually logged in for the entire time and my account had been reset.
Nice. I didn’t make a Steam account until it supported Linux back in 2013 or so. So I guess I’ll be celebrating 10 years on Steam soon.
