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.
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