The very first Steam user accounts are officially 20-years-old this week, and Valve is celebrating by handing out special digital badges to the oldest members of the community, featuring the storefront's original green aesthetic.

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.”

  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    91·
    1 year ago

    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.

      • Queue@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        5·
        1 year ago

        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.

  • Abrslam @sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    5·
    1 year ago

    I remember how much everyone hated steam at first. The WON was fine why ruin it with this stupid steam thing?

  • easydnesto@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    11/22/2004 reporting in. Just currently 18 almost 19. I do not have a short steam ID though. Can’t remember which game was the first but pretty sure it was either half-life or HL2

  • LazerFX@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    51·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • NuPNuA@lemm.eeEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      I’m always shocked at how behind the US is in some areas of tech despite having so many of the big tech companies located there. Like you say their internet coverage and terms of packages, like still having data limits in 2023. Also the fact that they still sign for card payments in shops, when we’ve been though both chip and pin and contactless since that method was common.

      • LazerFX@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Yeah - I don’t even cary cards with me any more, it’s all on my phone. Including many store cards (Coop, Texaco, Shell, McDonalds…) which automatically pick up without me doing much - I scan, it works.

        The only thing I can think is that the US is such a fractured environment with Federal, State and Local government, each with different jurisdictions, rules and taxation, that trying to get it to work would be beurocratically difficult. But at the same time, it’s so ruled by corporations that surely they’d want to push the easiest way - flip your phone out and wave it to pay, easy and secure, so make it happen :D

      • fuzzzerd@programming.devEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        I robbed my self of that ability accidentally, because I preferred cs 1.3/4/5 and it was won only, so I actively avoided 1.6 like the plague and with it steam. Then halflife 2 came out and I bit the bullet.

  • Swarfega@lemm.eeEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    I’m like 3120 or something to sign up. That day was a complete mess as everyone signing up and trying to download their games DDoSed the platform. At that time Steam was just a client to download and play Valve games.

    I was younger then and had my own domain thinking I was cool but it is actually shit and uses leet speak. I’m stuck with that forever now as my account name. Sigh.

  • jet@hackertalks.comEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    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.