On Steam After a Decade of Membership

Today is a special day for me, my friends, and I hope you’ll join me in celebrating. No, it isn’t my birthday or anything like that. In fact, I would argue that today is more momentous than even the most enjoyable birthday I can remember. You see, today is the ten-year anniversary of the day I created my Steam account. Now, I know that may sound like a ridiculous thing to celebrate. However, I’d like to explain why I decided to commemorate the occasion by writing this piece.

Beyond that, I’d also like to offer my thoughts on the Steam platform as a whole now that I’ve faithfully used it almost daily for an entire decade. I thought I would start by sharing a bit of my personal history when it comes to PC gaming and, by extension, my loyalty to Steam. As I’ve mentioned in one or two of my previous articles, the single game that really got me into PC gaming was Valve’s own Team Fortress 2.

When I was first introduced to TF2 by the man who remains my best friend to this day, I knew I needed to see what all the fuss was about. I felt compelled to build my own capable gaming computer so that I wouldn’t have to rely on consoles any longer. After a lot of blood, sweat, tears and a fair bit of money, that’s exactly what I ended up doing a few years after I was first exposed to Team Fortress 2.

By the time my first decent gaming rig was up and running, TF2 had become completely free-to-play. I’m sure you can imagine that I’ve most certainly taken advantage of that change. Team Fortress 2 remains my most-played game on Steam by a fairly wide margin. More specifically, I’ve currently logged just shy of 755 hours in that title. That number is sure to increase from there so long as I have any say in the matter.

That brings me to my second most-played title in Steam’s vast library, Sid Meier’s Civilization VI. If you’re a recurring reader of ours, you likely know Civ VI as that game I can’t seem to shut up about when it comes to things like major Steam sales. At the time of writing, I’ve currently spent just under 562 hours playing Civilization VI. That’s another number that will most assuredly increase over time, especially thanks to the game’s recently-completed season pass.

In case you’re curious, I see no harm in briefly discussing my third most-played title in my entire Steam library just to round out the trifecta. The game in question is Sid Meier’s Civilization V. Civ V was my first experience with the Civilization franchise as a whole. I was hooked on the game as soon as I played its demo. As I recall, I played that demo at a perfect time, since that year’s Steam Summer Sale happened to still be active when I had my first taste of Civ.

I may have only logged about 238 hours in Civilization V at the time of writing, but I want to emphasize that I’ve enjoyed every one of those hundreds of hours. Things just worked out to where I purchased the complete edition of Civ V about six months or so before its successor released. The rest, as they say, is history.

All of that is to say that I wholeheartedly feel I have Valve to thank for creating some of the games and the digital distribution platform which has an invaluable role in helping shape my tastes as a gamer. Without Steam, I don’t know what the previous ten years of my life would have been like. Heck, maybe I’d still be gaming primarily on consoles for all I know.

Honestly, though, I don’t really remember all that much of the past ten years I’ve spent using Steam aside from a few specific occasions and facts. I can still vividly remember purchasing my first game on the platform shortly after initially creating my account (Team Fortress Classic, in case you’re wondering). With a quick glance at my profile page, I can easily tell you how many games I own. That’s a handy feature in my case, as I tend to forget that information rather frequently.

However, I usually can’t recall exactly what the last game I added to my account was or precisely how many games in my backlog I’ve yet to play. Due to that, I seem to be in at least a somewhat similar situation to many of my fellow Steam users. I mean, really, who doesn’t have at least a small backlog of games with which they’ve had every intention of playing just as soon as the opportunity presents itself?

The most recent significant memory I have when it comes to Steam is the open beta release of Fall 2019’s library update. I admit that I had to look at the publication date of my own article on that topic to remember exactly when that update first rolled out, but that’s neither here nor there. In my personal opinion, this redesign of the library system was one of the best ideas Valve has ever implemented.

Nearly two years since that library redesign went live and left open beta, I’m still quite a huge fan of all the changes and new features this update brought with it. For example, the new “collections” mechanic continues to play a crucial role in helping me organize my library of games as it continues to grow. Beyond that, the increased ability to customize your profile via the items available in the Points Shop is also wonderful as far as I’m concerned.

To conclude, I sincerely hope this article doesn’t come off as a bit of free advertising for Valve or Steam. That was absolutely not the intention I had in mind when I began working on this article. Instead, I simply felt that having been a part of the Steam community for ten whole years was something worthy of commemoration.

There has been quite a lot of meaning and value added to my life over the past decade because of Steam and the friends I’ve made over the course of this journey. I’ve had a wonderful time of things for the most part because of this platform, and I hope I get to use it for at least ten more years. Now if only I had the time to play every game in my backlog…