team came into the world on Sept. 12, 2003 with growtopia gem hack a handful of titles all targati Valve. From that fateful moment in today has passed water under the bridge: digital distribution has changed from the state of potential danger fraught with problems, a normal able to cut development costs and purchase prices. It remains to understand what might happen to our catalog if Steam were to disappear suddenly, but that’s not the fear we are to deal with here. Steam came 1500 Games in 2010, reached 3,000 in 2013, reached 3,700 articles in 2014 and 2015 exceeded all of a sudden the threshold of 6000 titles.
The last jump was nothing short of monstrous, stimulated by this input, we wonder what dangers could lead to all this opulence. But before talking about issues we start with the advantages of a platform, not being came first to the digital delivery, was the one that has stood the strong suspicion and barriers, going in time to make available hundreds of titles for Linux and Mac . Obviously the huge catalog has been formed from large cornerstones Valve and the confidence of publishers, but have had a major role in the indie, the Greenlight system with all its limitations and the Early Access. The platform Valve has wisely structured to fit together synergistically in vigorous and healthy environment of crowdfunding, offering an environment that does not interfere with this practice and allows the development participated since the decision whether to support a project. Genres disappeared, great classics and remakes have emerged from one environment to say the least effervescent Steam has among its most important gear. It is not the only one, mind you, but it is the biggest player in the field and it is here that sticks out the issue monopolistic. Not be on Steam can be a problem because there, even in the case of free-to-play, can guarantee a sudden influx of users thanks to a base of 125 million players. Steam is a titan, a landmark, a power and it is also thanks to the difference in content than any other means of digital distribution.
The good thing too?
It is no coincidence that Newell has decided to transform it into a real platform, although probably things do not go as planned. But although the concept of Steam Machine has thinned in the normal range of compact PCs, the technological side of the platform is still evolved from online infrastructure to reach its objective, standardized support for the changes, the interface big picture, streaming, operating system and custom controller. A bag like that, strong of a catalog of 6000 titles, leads us to believe that soon Newell and company will return to the office even if for now things are calm, the dispute with Microsoft seems to have subsided and the bet of a Steam all tied to steamos may have been momentarily put aside. Although Valve has recently reiterated prefer bookstores Vulkan which can count on the full support on Windows 7, Windows 8 and Linux. However there are other ways to set foot in the hardware and one of those most in vogue at the moment is virtual reality. The last entry came from Valve denies support for viewers of Half Life 3, but it is difficult to take seriously a declaration relating to a game that we know does not exist. And a viewer with an exclusive like that would be a nice hit, but we could definitely settle for Left 4 Dead 3 or Portal 3.
But one certainty is that Valve does not publish or announce anything back for three years and it is likely that one reason is the very fact that he can count on an endless catalog that must devote a lot of attention. The other certainty is that when Steam does not seem to need to wage war on anyone, much more than in the PC does not have direct competitors. The catalog EA is still only 500 titles and the beloved GoG has a population of 1200 probably for the policy, which we greatly appreciate, DRM free. Steam instead, we repeat, it has exceeded 6000 and probably is already close to the next thousand. The actual running of Steam began in 2005 with the opening of the third party and from that moment on the improvements to the infrastructure have been numerous. With the growth of the catalog, Valve has improved the search parameters, increased the visibility of independent games and created the role of curators involving bloggers and youtuber, which have become cogs in the system and tools to advertise it. The Early Access enabled huge numbers of users to review the titles in advance and the compensation system has added a further possibility of verification by protecting Steam from complaints. All necessary precautions as the Greenlight system, but welcome as trivial can be a democratic system, it has opened the door to a lot of titles: although this is a good thing in view of pushing the independent development, have rained criticism for tons of roguelike and securities pixel art disembodied, demonstrating that the abundance is not necessarily positive. But we must consider that a good part of the package is made of past glories that keep coming abundant every year. In 2014 44 percent of the catalog Steam consisted of titles already published previously and is an important thing. Steam, GoG as, is a database of the history of PC gaming. And it is a story of porting, emulation and virtual operating systems can be enjoyed almost entirely on a single machine. We speak of an immense cultural value that counts seminal titles to which we owe much of what is the best modern gaming. Often, it must be said, Steam users buy just to have the opportunity to play a game but rarely do. The amount of securities, the aging of the games and the excessive availability often lead buyers to leave a sad limbo tons of titles, sometimes installed on a paradisebay gem hack machine but played for about ten minutes at the most.
