In the early 2000s, Valve was looking for a better way to update its published games, as providing downloadable patches for multiplayer games resulted in most of the online user base … See more

Until 2012, Valve handpicked games to be included onto the Steam service, limiting these to games that either had a major developer supporting them, or smaller studios with proven … See more

Windows
Steam was originally released exclusively for Microsoft Windows in 2003, but has since been ported to … See more

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Software delivery and maintenance
Steam's primary service is to allow its users to purchase games and other software, adding them to a virtual library from which they may be downloaded and installed an unlimited number of times. Initially, Valve was … See more

In June 2015, Valve created a formal process to allow purchasers to request refunds, with refunds guaranteed within the first two weeks as long as the player had not spent more than two hours in a game. Prior to June 2015, Valve had a no-refunds policy, but … See more

Steam's success has led to some criticism because it supported DRM and for being an effective monopoly. In 2012, Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman called DRM using Steam on Linux "unethical", but still better than Windows. See more