Steam - WTF? Explain please..

[Paper Tiger]

Never heard of Steam before, No idea what it is/does etc. Not played many games for a while, but want to. Can someone explain it, how it works, what it does etc. as simply as possible.

Thank you.

[Hutch]

Righty o then. If you havent heard of steam before it was the most annoying piece of software but is now amazing.

In the beginning it was just a program made by Valve (developers of Half Life series, Counter-Strike and Team Fortress 2) to facilitate the copy protection and online play of Half life. It came after the WON system previously used for GoldSrc games (HL1 etc) Basically a server browser and an online account which acknowledged your access to the valve games you owned meaning you didnt need to use a disc. Then when Half life 2 came out it became more of a store front and download centre for valve's games ( a facility it had before), so you could buy valve games online, download them via steam. Also they forced everyone to validate their copy of Half-Life 2 via Steam before they could play... a single player game mind, in a time before Broadband was in absolutely everyones homes. This royally pissed people off as it cost money through dial-up and steam was a bit buggy and old looking.
Now its shiny and nice, and the system ensures that noone steals Valve's lovely games, and valve make sure that there arent many cracks of their games.

After many updates Steam incorporated a buddy system and added more games to their store, they are now probably the best place to buy a download of a game from with other developers like Eidos,Relic,Popcap, Creative Assembly and take2. By selling games over the internet, the distribution costs are lessened and there is less money given to the bastard publishers. There are ALOT of games available on steam . The steam community they added later was an extension of the friends thing earlier incorporated, in response for the crappiest thing ever... Windows live.

Also, this community is almost entirely based on Steam/Valve games.

[Paper Tiger]

That'll be where I'm going wrong. I don't have Steam...
How does it work? Like downloading the games, paying for them, using them etc.

[Hutch]

Go to www.steampowered.com , then Download the steam client, once installed, create a steam account. Then you log onto this when you open the client. There should be a store page. You click the game you want to buy, you might have to use the search feature and some games come in multipacks as well as singularly... then click purchase... you then follow through the payment details bits entering in your payment information, then you've bought it, its on your steam games list permanently, then it will automatically download the game. Then whenever you log into that account you will be able to play that game as long as its installed (steam installs while it downloads). And you never need to put in a CD for any game purchased on steam as the game is bound to that account.

[Paper Tiger]

Much easier... Thanks for the explanation.
I'll try it