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Steam was rejected by Microsoft, Yahoo

Published on 30th April 2008 by Joe Martin

Valve originally offered Steam to both Microsoft and Yahoo, but were rejected.

Steam is pretty much ubiquitous for gamers everywhere nowadays and we accept it as a fundamental part of our daily TF2 deathmatches. There was a time though when the digital distribution platform was only a concept though and in that time Valve offered to partner up with Microsoft or Yahoo.

But both of them said no.

Speaking in an interview with GI.biz, Valve's Doug Lombardi said that they originally tried to get Microsoft and Yahoo on board to help build Steam, but were eventually forced into designing the platform themselves from scratch.

"You know, we went around to Yahoo, Microsoft...and anybody who seemed like a likely candidate to build something like Steam," said Lombardi in the interview with James Lee.

"We basically had our feature list that we wanted. We wanted auto-updating, we wanted better anti-piracy, better anti-cheat, and selling the games over the wire was something we came up with later. We went around to everybody and asked 'Are you guys doing anything like this?' And everyone was like 'That's a million miles in the future...We can't help you.'"

I bet those companies are kicking themselves now - the last headcount revealed that Steam hosts over 300 games for a community in excess of 14 million. While the system is rarely flawless, it is at least functional and continues to represent the forefront of PC games distribution. Let us hear your LOLs in the forums.

25 Comments

Discuss in the forums Reply

sotu1 30th April 2008, 11:04

i'm glad they got rejected early on. I wouldn't want the top games distributor to be run by a mammoth giant like micro$oft.

cereal_killer 30th April 2008, 11:19

At least they didn't go and get accepted by ea then who knows how steam would of been

Denis_iii 30th April 2008, 11:22

awesome, now lets hope valve releases steam sale stats so THEY stop complaining bout piracy and put there games on steam....fingers crossed EA goes bust so Valve can buy em and put there catalog on steam :) come on over C&C

p3n 30th April 2008, 11:42

MMO's killed the radio star or something

Naberius 30th April 2008, 12:14

Steam is a great platform, could you just imagine the crap it would have been if MS would have given it their touch.

Redbeaver 30th April 2008, 14:11

agree to all the above ^

LOL

chicorasia 30th April 2008, 14:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Naberius
Steam is a great platform, could you just imagine the crap it would have been if MS would have given it their touch.

We should thank MS and yahoo's shortsightedness on this.

The MS Games for Windows Live or whatever it is called is sooo awkward, I can't be bothered to try and play gears of war or world in conflict online; I'd rather just play TF2.

Tomm 30th April 2008, 14:54

Yeah, I know people moan about Steam, but really I think it's awesome. There's so much potential for it to totally cripple your system and make games inaccessible, but that doesn't happen. It just works...

Brett89 30th April 2008, 15:28

Here it comes... get ready.... LOL @ M$ hahahahaha! good for Steam though, I'm glad they were turned down, because it is the platform which I buy games over, so easy, and no more worrying about discs, win!

speedfreek 30th April 2008, 16:56

Its great that they don't have their fingers in there messing up things. Steam works great for me and the fact that I don't have to worry about patches or CDs/CD keys makes it convenient.

Otto's 30th April 2008, 17:11

agree to you all..
Steam is a great. Those guys from Value know what gamers like.

They build gaming industry with gamers, not against them. making me just want to buy those addicting online games from them.

Jordan Wise 30th April 2008, 17:33

steam is brilliant, another shining example of how valve always does things better way than everyone else

DXR_13KE 30th April 2008, 18:06

steam is bloody great.... and i thank MS and yahoo for staying clear from them.

pendragon 30th April 2008, 18:12

I have mixed feelings about Steam, personally... Generally I'd much rather buy a physical disc that doesnt require an internet connection to install ... however, I can see its appeal, and I've used it, definitely.

I agree - I'm sure Microsoft and Yahoo are giving a collective "D'oh!" about not getting in on the ground floor with this.

Breach 30th April 2008, 20:46

Steam was a pile early on, no doubt. But it evolved into one of if not the best distribution engines around. I really love automatic updates the most, lots of little updates is way better than 500mb worth of patch at a time every few months, fixing bugs almost instantly.

MS and Yahoo are more interested in scoffing good ideas and trying to copy them poorly *coughzunecough* anyway.

notatoad 30th April 2008, 21:01

steam might be a good distribution system and DRM implementation, but it sure is an annoying UI. it can't check for updates until i actually want to play the game, and then it makes me wait to play until the updates are installed? WTF?

Amon 30th April 2008, 21:46

If it weren't for Live, Megasoft would have ran off with Steam.

TheoGeo 30th April 2008, 23:23

Meh, its probably a good thing, but I personally can't stand steam. It sits in the background even if you're not interested in playing a game and if you want to play a game that doesn't require an internet connection, you have to connect. The whole thing is retarded and the reason i didn't bother with the orange box.

What was wrong with buying a cd, installing and that being the end of it? Its not because of piracy because steam games are pirated anyway and its not because of price because they're no cheaper direct from steam than they are from amazon... so what is it?

cyrilthefish 1st May 2008, 10:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by supertoad
it can't check for updates until i actually want to play the game

Yes it does! I haven't played TF2 in months, but i noticed it updating itself last night :)

[USRF]Obiwan 1st May 2008, 17:27

Some people are complaing all about steam, I have steam since the start and did not have any problems whatsover. Are they wrong or am I lucky?

cyrilthefish 1st May 2008, 18:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheoGeo
Meh, its probably a good thing, but I personally can't stand steam. It sits in the background even if you're not interested in playing a game and if you want to play a game that doesn't require an internet connection, you have to connect. The whole thing is retarded and the reason i didn't bother with the orange box.

Different people like different setups. personally, i'd get every PC game from now on in steam or an equivalent service.
Unless you're living in an area not covered by broadband, who doesn't have a 24/7 internet connection nowadays? i don't see how the 'being online part' is anyway bad... steam works offline too anyways.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheoGeo
What was wrong with buying a cd, installing and that being the end of it? Its not because of piracy because steam games are pirated anyway and its not because of price because they're no cheaper direct from steam than they are from amazon... so what is it?

why go to to hassle of wasting resources and storagespace getting a CD/box, having to find the CD everytime you want to play of faff round with NO-CD cracks, when you can just buy/download/play in one easy transaction? :P

at the end of the day, as long as people have a choice of online or physical media, there's no problem

D3s3rt_F0x 1st May 2008, 19:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by [USRF]Obiwan
Some people are complaing all about steam, I have steam since the start and did not have any problems whatsover. Are they wrong or am I lucky?

Gotta admit I'm the same apart from at the start where you had a few million users all trying to download 1.6 at the same time and Valve has underestimated how many people would want it, its been spot on. Probbaly the best program on my PC.

theevilelephant 1st May 2008, 21:46

Well im at uni and getting steam to work would take up all the ports im allowed to unblock. This was all fine untill i bought portal, pop the disk in, up pops a little box telling me i need steam. To put it mildly i was absolutely insane with rage that the single player game i just bought needed a steam account. I don't want my games from steam. make it an option, certainly, but deffinetly not exclusive!

rhuitron 3rd May 2008, 22:59

Worst decision EVER!

EnglishLion 5th May 2008, 10:37

I can understand people not liking steam for some reasons but I love it. I've just upgraded to Vista 64 and moving my games across on steam is simple - no need to find CDs, no chance of loosing CDs and all the games I've played so far work perfectly. I got steam back up and running in no time, took me much longer to get around to reloading BF2, with SF and patch 1.41!

I must say I'm glad valve did it alone, I'm just concerned that at the moment they might be opening it up to too many other companies. They need to retain the associated quality level.