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.
Fellow sept 12th here! Never would have thought that the simple looking launcher would turnout to be one of biggest juggernaut of selling digitale games!
Had to make a account so I could keep on playing CS 1.6. good times.
Team 9/12/03 reporting in
I’m two days behind you.
“What’s your friend ID”
“123456”…
“Okay, what’s the rest of the numbers?”
“That’s it. Those ARE the numbers”
*pikachu face*Lmao I get this all the time. My account turns 20 tomorrow.
Oh man that’s awesome
Mine doesn’t turn 20 until January. I decided to wait a bit to see if it would actually fail first.
I hated the idea of an installer to install programs that had their own installers. It seemed like a pointless extra program to me, so I resisted getting it until I wanted to play Counterstrike and Steam was the best, or maybe the only way to do that. So I broke down and opened a Steam account.
I’d still prefer if we didn’t have to have these launchers.
What is cs2?
Counterstrike 2. But I guess I was misremembering, since I can’t find any reference to a CS2. I guess maybe it was CS 1.2. Shrug
You’re thinking about Counter Strike Source, which was on the new (at that point) Source engine. CS:Source is what came after CS 1.6
Yes that must be it! CSS. Ha! Web dev shit.
There’s never been a CS2. Other than a version of the name of the set of Adobe programs (ie, Photoshop CS2)
CS 1.6 is the popular one. That version is about to turn 20 as well.
You’re probably thinking of Counter Strike: Source, the name they gave it when they released it built on the Source engine.
Then there was the current one, Global Offensive.
However, there’s a new one about to be released that I think is still being called CS2. Not sure if that’s the final name or not, I haven’t been following it very closely. But I think it’s due to release this month. Or sometime soon.
Thanks. I think it was Counterstrike Source.
I saw at least 2, maybe 3 other comments mentioning CS2, so you’re not the only one. Unless you were talking about it elsewhere in these comments and that was you.
I was beginning to think there was another OG stream game I hadn’t heard of.
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.
My steam account was also created in November, so I’m going to say that is correct as CS was the reason I made mine too
CS is what got me to finally open a steam account too. I can’t remember if it was the only way to play, or if it was a considerably better way to play. Either way, everyone playing CS was on Steam so I finally opened an account.
Same
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.
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
yeah at the time you were forced into it. the won servers were shut down and most peoples computers werent good enough to play CS and have this clunky software running in the background at the same time. it worked but alt-tabbing back then was a gong show and you definitely had the performance hit.
i played CS daily then so the first day was a shit show and I dont think I got much time in that day. mostly just trying to get connected…the servers were overloaded.
That brings back memories. I used to play ARC on WON. TEN prior to that. Anyone remember Kali? I think it’s still running.
I still remember that meme with the Valve gear fucking a guy in the ass. Steam was not well received.
I remember getting Half Life 2 for free with my graphics card, then realizing that I needed to download a whole ass other program to redeem my code and download the game. I thought it was for sure a scam and some kind of virus they were trying to get me to install. There were lots of “free” things back then that required you to download a virus to redeem.
Eventually I learned it was legit and downloaded it and got my free copy of HL2, but I was not happy about it.
Now every time I download a game at 800Mbps, I’m like, “I LOVE STEAM”
Edit: I just checked when I created my account. 16 years, 10 months ago. I still have a bit to go before I hit that 20 year mark. Apparently I created my account on my mom’s birthday? I wonder why I did that instead of doing something with her?
I too got hl2 free my graphics card, it was some kind of special edition that had like better cooling or something. It came in a special case too.
Unfortunately there was something wrong with it, don’t remember what. But I went back to the store and they didn’t had a replacement for it.
But for 50 bucks extra I could get a other, better card. They paid 50 themselves as a customer service thing, very nice that was!
I ended up flashing the card to unlock it to a higher tier card, never had any problems with it. So it was a truly great experience for me when hl2 launched.
The good old days.
Same thing here. I didn’t want another program just to manage my programs. I could do that without Steam. Of course now it’s pretty awesome, but it was fairly redundant when it released.
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.
Skyrim?
Oblivion, actually. Skyrim didn’t come out until that November.
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.
I thought it was great. I got a physical copy of the Orange Box for $20 and didn’t care that I had to install Steam to play it. After I had it set up and realized I didn’t have to physically go to the store to get games anymore, I like it even more.
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 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.
I think so or CS, I’m not sure?
Christmas '04 Orange Box-er here checking in
17y 10m for me
Lol mine too. I guess I wasn’t that early of an adopter.
19 here :'(
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I remember connecting with WON before steam, nostalgia CS days
wish i could hide badges… the CS 10 year veteran badge makes it really shameful to play CS… because I never play CS, I just own it.
I too bought CS:S so I could use the assets in Garry’s Mod.
You have to choose to display them to begin with… You mean they won’t let you choose not to afterwards?
I couldn’t figure out a way to have Counter-Strike not show that badge
Interesting
One more year and my Steam account can legally drink and smoke. I’m taking it to Vegas!
You can start drinking at 18
In America, probably not. It’s 21 for all states due to a federal law. If a state has it lower than 21, they get way less funding for Federal high ways, as the bill was aimed to lower drunk driving.
“Only” 12 years here.
I hit 16 a few months ago.
Orange box homies say whatsup.
Yes! I spent entirely too much time in TF2 and Gmod.
Haha yup. I bought it for half life, but figured i would play the other games first. Portal was amazing, so I gave TF2 a shot next.
I didn’t play half life for like 2 years.
Hitting 20 in 5 hours… ;)
I am at 16 as well. I feel so old now lol
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.
15 here.
I only signed up to play hl2 I think before that I used keys and CDs for things like ground zero
I remember a work friend burnt HL2 on cd for me and the only way to make it work was he also gave me his steam login. and the dude had a ripper username I still remember to this day, even though I havnt seen him in nearly 20 years.
mrpoo
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!
I’ve got about 8 hours, but I also live on the opposite side of the earth +12 hours, so we’ll see if it’s bound to UTC time 😂
Probably thousands, if not more!
At least
Edit: Mine turns 20 in 5 days
Apparently I’ve got 6 more days til mine turns 20, as well.
I finally managed to find my account age. 19 years and one month! Time flies.
I had a long hiatus, but I still play FPS games regularly. And I can still join a random HL2 deathmatch and pwn :).
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.
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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Oh man. It is year 20. I think I made my account like 6 days in. I have a 6 digit steam ID.
I remember the steam beta, allowing me to finally ditch « the all seeing eye ».
Count me in the 20s !
Haha the what now? Are you talking about the Yahoo! Software?
It was basically GameSpy, but better.
GameSpy was a universal server browser.
If you ever used the server browser in Steam itself and not from the game, that’s basically what they were. An external app that you could get a list of servers for pretty much anything you added to it.
