Although Steam provides direct sales data to developers and publishers, it does not provide public sales data. Steam has grown from seven games in 2004 to over 30,000 by 2019, with additional non-gaming products, such as creation software, DLC, and videos, numbering over 20,000. In August 2017, Valve reported a peak of 14 million concurrent players, up from 8.4 million in 2015, with 33 million active daily and 67 million active monthly. Valve also considers concurrent users — how many accounts are logged in at the same time — a key indicator of the success of the platform. In September 2014, 1.4 million accounts belonged to Australian users; this grew to 2.2 million by October 2015. Most accounts were from North America and Western Europe, with there being a significant growth in accounts from Asia around 2017, spurred by its work to help localize the client and make additional currency options available to purchasers.
In-Home Streaming was introduced in May 2014; it allows users to stream games installed on one computer to another on the same home network with low latency. It was released alongside free versions of Portal 2 and a standalone program called "Puzzle Maker" that allowed teachers and students to create and manipulate levels. With the introduction of the Steam Deck, Valve began pushing the new Big Picture mode based on the Steam Deck UI in beta testing in October 2022, and full release in February 2023. Big Picture mode is a 10-foot user interface which optimizes the Steam display to work on high-definition televisions, allowing the user to control Steam with a gamepad or with a keyboard and mouse.
Initially developed for Windows, Steam was ported to macOS and Linux in 2010 and 2013 respectively, while a mobile version of Steam for interacting with the service's online features was released on iOS and Android in 2012. Steamworks, an application programming interface (API) released in 2008, is used by developers to integrate Steam's functions, including digital rights management (DRM), into their products. The storefront also offers productivity software, game soundtracks, videos, and sells hardware made by Valve, such as the Valve Index and the Steam Deck. Steam offers various features, such as game server matchmaking with Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) measures, social networking, and game streaming services.
Specifications
In September 2014, Steam Music was added to the Steam client, allowing users to play through music stored on their computer or to stream from a locally networked computer directly in Steam. Steam's "Remote Play Together", added in November 2019 after a month of beta testing, gives the ability for local multiplayer games to be played by people in disparate locations, though will not necessary resolve latency problems typical of these types of games. By June 2019, Valve renamed this feature to Remote Play, allowing users to stream games across devices that may be outside of their home network.
- In August 2017, Valve reported a peak of 14 million concurrent players, up from 8.4 million in 2015, with 33 million active daily and 67 million active monthly.
- In September 2014, Steam Music was added to the Steam client, allowing users to play through music stored on their computer or to stream from a locally networked computer directly in Steam.
- Valve began marking all games on the service through a Steam Deck Validated program to indicate how compatible they were with the Steam Deck software.
- An update to the friends and chat system was released in July 2018, allowing for non-peer-to-peer chats integrated with voice chat and other features that were compared to Discord.
- Prior to June 2015, Valve had a no-refunds policy, but allowed them in certain circumstances, such as digital rights management issues or false advertising.
- Valve developed a full video homage to Apple's 1984 Macintosh commercial to announce the availability of Half-Life 2 on the service; some concept images for the video had previously been used to tease the Mac Steam client.
Apple later clarified its rule at the following Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in early June, in that iOS apps may not offer an app-like purchasing store, but does not restrict apps that provide remote desktop support. On May 14, 2018, a "Steam Link" app with remote play features was released in beta to allow users to stream games to Android phones, named after discontinued set-top box Steam Link. Valve attributes the inability to use Steamworks on the Xbox 360 to limitations in the Xbox Live regulations of the ability to deliver patches and new content.
It has a clean interface where you can browse the extensive game library, check user reviews, post on community forums, chat with friends in-game, or find custom game mods. Updates to Steam and SteamOS at this time included better Proton layer support for Windows-based games, improved user interface features in the Steam client for the Steam Deck display, and adding Dynamic Cloud Saves to Steam to allow synchronizing saved games while a game is being played. It was discontinued in 2018, and "Steam Link" now refers to the Remote Play mobile app that allows users to stream content, such as games, from a PC to a mobile device over a network. In response, Valve removed the ability to purchase games or other content through the app and resubmitted it for approval in June 2018, where it was accepted by Apple and allowed on its store in May 2019.
MSI App Player
Steam also allows game soundtracks to be purchased to be played via Steam Music or integrated with the user's other media players. Here you will be offered good cheesecakes, parfait and ice cream. From regulars, friends, neighbors to people who visit us for the first time we are committed to serving you tasty dishes garnished with exceptional customer service and served in a warm environment. Epic Games Store is currently the most diverse alternative to Steam, with a growing library of exclusive titles, regular game giveaways, and developer-friendly features like Unreal Engine integration.
In January 2026, Steam overhauled the points system, changing community rewards and deleting the famous "Clown" reward, together with removing the ability to earn points through rewards on content, in order to prevent users from profiting from provocative comments. Entertainment offering the Mad Max films alongside the September 2015 release of the game based on the series, Lionsgate entered into agreement with Valve to rent over one hundred feature films from its catalog through Steam starting in April 2016, with more films following later. From 2015 to 2019, Steam had the ability for publishers to rent and sell digital movies via the service, with initially most being video game documentaries. Valve adjusted its approach to soundtracks in 2020, no longer requiring them to be offered as DLC, meaning that users can buy soundtracks to games they do not own, and publishers can offer soundtracks to games not on Steam. In conjunction with developers and publishers, Valve frequently provides discounted sales on games on a daily and weekly basis, sometimes oriented around a publisher, genre, or holiday theme, and sometimes allows games to be tried for free during the days of these sales.
In March 2022, Google offered a prerelease version of Steam on Chromebooks, and entered public beta in November 2022. Support for Nvidia's proprietary deep learning super sampling (DLSS) on supported video cards and games was added to Proton in June 2021, though this is not available on the Steam Deck which is based on AMD hardware. In July 2012, Valve announced that it was developing a client for Linux based on the Ubuntu distribution.
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The early access approach allowed more developers to publish games onto the Steam service without the need for Valve's direct curation of games, significantly increasing the number of available games on bebis hotel the service. This program allows developers to release functional, but not finished, products such as beta versions to the service to allow users to buy the games and help provide testing and feedback towards the final production. Valve added the ability for developers to sell games under an early access model with a special section of the Steam store, starting in March 2013. In February 2014, Valve announced that it would begin to allow developers to set up their own sales for their games independent of any sales that Valve may set.
Valve reported that there were 125 million active accounts on Steam by the end of 2015.b By August 2017, the company reported that there were 27 million new active accounts since January 2016, bringing the total number of active users to at least 150 million. Following a Chinese government-ordered temporary block of many of Steam's functions in December 2017, Valve and Perfect World announced they would help to provide an officially sanctioned version of Steam that meets Chinese Internet requirements. China has strict regulations on video games and Internet use; however, access to Steam is allowed through China's governmental firewalls. In November 2025, Valve announced new lines of gaming hardware, including the Steam Machine gaming computer, the Steam Frame virtual reality headset, and a next-generation Steam Controller, targeting a Spring 2026 release date.
Epic also provides mobile apps for Android and iOS, where you can download mobile-exclusive games, including titles like Fortnite that are not available through any other store on mobile devices. The application allows players to log into their accounts to browse the storefront, manage their games, and communicate with friends in the Steam community. In July 2015, a bug in the software allowed anyone to reset the password to any account by using the "forgot password" function of the client. It was launched as a software client in September 2003 to provide video game updates automatically for Valve's games and expanded to distributing third-party titles in late 2005.